


I Really Really (Really Really Really) Like You

by smutty_claus, teenage_hustler



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 13:57:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12985506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smutty_claus/pseuds/smutty_claus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenage_hustler/pseuds/teenage_hustler
Summary: Pansy Parkinson is an expert in magical houses, and she has been sent to investigate Harrison Estate; a real trickster of a mansion that has been causing its previous owners no small amount of strife. A job like this could be dangerous, so Pansy requests help from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Unfortunately, the Auror they send over is none other than Ron Weasley. More unfortunately, the house then decided to lock them both in...





	I Really Really (Really Really Really) Like You

**To: **cryptaknight**  
From: Your Secret Santa.**

> **Title:** I Really Really Really (Really Really Really) Like You  
>  **Author:** Teenage_Hustler  
>  **Pairing:** Ron/Pansy  
>  **Summary:** Pansy Parkinson is an expert in magical houses, and she has been sent to investigate Harrison Estate; a real trickster of a mansion that has been causing its previous owners no small amount of strife. A job like this could be dangerous, so Pansy requests help from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Unfortunately, the Auror they send over is none other than Ron Weasley. More unfortunately, the house then decided to lock them both in...  
>  **Rating:** NC-17  
>  **Length:** 33,500 or so  
>  **Warnings:** none  
>  **Author's notes:** **cryptaknight** , I really hope you like your gift! This took a lot out of me (as you might be able to tell by the length of it!) but your prompts were so amazing, and this is just the sort of fic that I love writing. 
> 
> The title, and some of the story inspiration, comes from Carly Rae Jepson’s ‘I Really Like You’.
> 
> Lastly, thanks to my three amazing betas, S, N, and R. All three of you are absolute stars.

~*~

Monday (6 Days Until Christmas)

If anybody were to ask Pansy Parkinson what her least favourite time of day was, she would say that it very much depended on the day. That being said, when the day was Monday, 9am was definitely right up there. The start of the working week had never been something she could look at with mindless enthusiasm.

That was not to say that she did not enjoy her job, because she certainly did. Very few people could claim to be a leading expert in magical houses. But Pansy could, and she was paid quite handsomely for it.

Considering how she had grown up believing that she would never have to work, the end of the war, her father’s life imprisonment, and the 10-year freezing of the entire Parkinson estate, had been a rude awakening to say the least. She entered the job market completely unprepared, and would probably have taken the first menial position that was offered to her, had Narcissa Malfoy not instructed her to think not about what the world might offer her, but what she might be able to offer the world. 

The answer came to her a few days later, when she was pouring herself a cup of tea in Malfoy Manor; where she was living at the time. Pansy had been just about to place the teapot on the table when she heard a rough, grumbling noise. The source of the noise was not immediately discernable, and it sounded almost like somebody clearing their throat.

“Right, sorry,” Pansy said, moving the teapot back to the tea tray. Another noise, more like a satisfied ‘Hmm’ sounded, and Pansy picked up the book she had been reading as though nothing unusual had taken place.

But then, a moment later, she looked back at the teapot, which continued to sit happily on the tray. She then considered the room in which she was sitting. The lavish parlour currently had a peaceful, relaxed air to it; the sort of atmosphere most people would desire in a parlour. But Pansy knew that if she were to try and put the teapot on the table again, or move one of the pot plants, or take a cushion and fling it onto the floor, the room would feel uncomfortable and restless, like a Pureblood housewife who had just discovered her books were not on display in alphabetical order. 

It reminded her of a conversation she had had with Draco one summer. He mentioned that his bedroom was always too dark and too cold, even though there was always a fire and plenty of lamps dotted around. Pansy had asked him how messy his room was, and Draco said that his mother thought it looked like a common Muggle pigsty. Pansy told him to tidy it right away, and when he Floo’d her the next day, he reported that his room was warmer and brighter than it had been in years. 

“Duh,” Pansy had said. “Malfoy Manor hates being messy. It was probably hoping to freeze you out of that room so someone else would move in and tidy it.”

“How did you work that out?” Draco had asked.

Pansy shrugged. “It’s obvious.”

“No,” Draco disagreed. “It’s not.”

Thinking back on it, Pansy conceded that Draco was probably correct. Most Pureblood wizards were clued into the fact that magical dwellings had individual personalities, but few had ever bothered to find out what those personalities were, and fewer still knew how to live in harmony with their houses. 

Would anybody have a need for somebody who understands houses like I do? Pansy wondered.

It turned out that the Department of Magical Heritages and Artefacts was very much in need of somebody like Pansy. She was hired less than a month after her epiphany, and had been working there ever since. The department was a glorious mishmash of witches and wizards from a variety of backgrounds, all of whom boasting tremendous amounts of knowledge about a particular type of magical object. Mark Perkins, for instance, knew everything there was to know about magical eyewear. Bobby Forsythe had spent the past three decades making a name for himself in magical furniture. Susan Patterson had the biggest collection of magical fine china objects that Pansy had ever seen. She herself was one of four experts on magical buildings.

Most of the department’s work came in the form of assignments, which they normally worked on together or in groups. Some of her colleagues spent most of their time working in the Ministry, but Pansy’s area of expertise required her to spend more than half of her work time on location. It was fantastic, as far as Pansy was concerned. She got to travel all around the country, doing what she loved, and was paid for the privilege.

Despite frequently being on ‘away missions’, as she liked to call them, the Monday morning meeting was one event she was always obligated to attend. As Pansy was neither a people, nor a morning, person, interacting with a bunch of other humans first thing on a Monday morning was never going to be on her list of Top 10 Ways to Spend an Hour. 

Pansy entered the briefing room at 8:55am that morning to see that Susan Patterson was already there. Unlike Pansy, young Susan was at her best in the morning, and she already had her parchment, quill and ink out for note-taking. As Pansy took a seat next to her, Susan slid a mug of coffee over.

“Are you sure you don’t just want to be my assistant?” Pansy asked, clinging to the mug like it held the elixir of life and she was on the brink of death (which, to be fair, did not feel far from the truth).

Susan grinned. “The department budget couldn’t afford me for a job as all-encompassing as that.”

“Ha-ha.” Pansy took a sip of coffee, being sure to savour it, as she knew it was the best cup she would have all day. Susan was Muggle-born, and she regularly helped out in the coffee shop in Muggle London owned by her parents. Pansy had visited the shop once, and its atmosphere was so quaint, unassuming and friendly (much like Susan herself), that Pansy almost wished the building was magical so she soak up that atmosphere to an even greater extent.

Because most of the buildings Pansy had met in her career were arseholes.

“Seriously, though, thank you,” she said. “Any idea what’s on the agenda?”

“Probably not much this close to Christmas,” Susan answered. “Most of us have days off this week. I predict paperwork and in-house jobs.”

“Fascinating,” Pansy said, the sarcasm in her voice unmistakable. “Still, a quiet week could be nice.”

“Have you taken any holiday time?” Susan asked.

Pansy shook her head. “Christmas is a bit of a nothing holiday for me. Somebody should be here to keep things chugging along, and it makes the most sense if it’s me.”

Susan said nothing, but her sympathetic frown was enough of a response. Pansy’s father had died in Azkaban four years ago, making Pansy the only living member of the Parkinson family. For the most part her lack of relatives did not bother her, but Christmas was one occasion that seemed to highlight it and leave her feeling wistful. She was not much of a people person, it was true, but she sometimes missed having people with whom she felt strongly, irreversibly, connected. A family, in other words.

“Morning, troops.” 

Pansy smiled at the sound of her Head of Department’s voice. If somebody had told her a decade ago that she would someday have nothing but respect and admiration for Arthur Weasley, she would tell them to ease up on the Firewhiskey. But Pansy’s eight years of working under the middle-aged wizard had shown her that the Weasley patriarch was smart, he knew ridiculous amounts about magical artefacts and Statute of Secrecy laws, and he had a unique ability to judge people by their future intentions, rather than their past actions or family history. Nobody else would have welcomed the Parkinson heiress into their department straight after the war, but Arthur had taken a chance on her. For that, she would always be profoundly grateful.

“Morning Arthur,” she said as he passed her table. “Did you have a nice weekend?”

“Passable,” the older wizard replied. “Although the Wizarding Wireless Network was doing a Celestina Warbeck marathon on Saturday evening. I think my eardrums are still recovering from it.”

Pansy rolled her eyes. “Your wife is a lovely woman, Arthur, but her music preferences leave something to be desired.”

“I know. But she lets me regularly tinker with cars and rubber ducks, so I owe it to her to let some things go.”

“That, and she doesn’t know about all the magic he puts into those gadgets,” she whispered to Susan when Arthur walked off. Susan snickered.

“All right,” Arthur said once he reached the podium at the front of the room. “Thank you all for turning up. I know it’s not easy for any of us to leave our beds in this cold weather, especially when we’re all thinking about the holidays.”

“Or when we’ve got someone lovely in the bed with us, am I right?” Mark Perkins yelled out. 

Pansy rolled her eyes, but Arthur chuckled.

“Keep it clean, Mark. Now, normally we would be spending this week sorting out paperwork and finishing off some of our smaller jobs in preparation for the new year. But we have just received a new assignment, and it’s a good one.”

Pansy sat up a little straighter. When Arthur said that a new assignment was ‘good’, it almost always was. 

Arthur pointed his wand at the rolled up screen next to the podium, which cascaded down with a boisterous _shhhnk!_ He then opened a fresh-looking case file and removed a small stack of photos. He waved his wand over the photos, and they arranged themselves into a line and flew towards the nearby projector. Pansy let out a pleased ‘Oooh!’ when the first photo was projected.

Arthur chuckled a second time. “Yes, I thought this might be of particular interest to you, Pansy.”

The photo showed the front of an enormous house, at least as big as Malfoy Manor, although there was a fair chance that it was even bigger. The speckled stone outer walls and red brick chimneys suggested that it had originally been built in the 1400’s, while the stained wood panels, plush carpets and plastered walls along the interior indicated more recent, and probably Muggle-influenced, renovations. As more photos rolled through the projector, Pansy could see at least nine or ten bedrooms, five bathrooms, two living rooms, a spacious kitchen, a dining area, a ballroom, and a parlour. The grounds included a lake, a horse stable, a small-scale Quidditch pitch, and a breathtaking flower garden that indicated these photos had been taken in the springtime. 

It was probably one of the prettiest houses Pansy had ever seen, and she had seen a lot of houses.

But there was something disconcerting about the photos. Something in them had her feeling sad. It looked like the house was missing something.

“What do you all think?” Arthur asked, once most of the photos had been seen.

“Gorgeous,” said Bobby Forsythe.

“I’d live there,” added Mark Jenkins.

“It would be an intriguing house to get to know,” said John O’Toole; one of the other building experts.

“I agree.” Arthur looked pointedly at Pansy. “Have you noticed anything else about it, Pansy?”

Pansy had to think about it for a moment, but the sense of melancholy the photos had given pointed her in a particular direction.

“It’s lonely.”

Arthur nodded. “I thought so too.” He pointed his wand at the only photo still waiting for its turn in the projector. This one looked significantly older than others. It showed the front of the house, with an elderly couple standing in front of it in formal robes.

“This house is formally known as the Harrison Estate. John and Barbara Harrison here were the last live-in owners. Mr Harrison lived in this house for his entire life, before before passing away in 1980. His wife joined him a couple of months later. They had named no direct heirs in their will, so the house became the property of Mr Harrison’s closest living relative; his late brother’s son. Donny Harrison spent the rest of his life trying to sell the place. He passed away last week.”

Pansy frowned. “So when you say ‘the rest of his life’, do you mean that he spent over twenty years trying to sell that house?”

“I do. And he could not do it.”

“Why on earth not?” Susan cut in. “That house is magnificent. I’d live there myself if I could afford it.” Pansy nodded in agreement.

“Well, according to the notes in his will,” Arthur said, leafing through the case file until he found the correct page, “a lot of people were interested, but whenever somebody moved into the house, they soon reported that strange things kept happening to them. They would go to sleep in one place and end up in another. They would try to sit down, and the chair would poke them in the rear. Any food they stored in the larder would go rotten before they had a chance to eat it.”

Mark Jenkins snorted. Pansy could not blame him - that all sounded quite funny. 

“Indeed,” Arthur agreed. “But there were some happenings that were not so amusing. One family had a young boy, no older than two. He was locked in his bedroom one afternoon, and his parents could not get in there for 36 hours. The boy was quite unwell when the door finally unlocked itself. One husband and wife slept in separate rooms because of how loud the wife’s snoring was, and despite the half a dozen walls and corridors between them, the husband could hear the wife every night, as clearly as if she were snoring directly into his ear.”

“Wow,” Pansy said. “So I am assuming none of these new owners were the owners for very long?”

“Correct. Donny Harrison would give the new owners the keys, and the same keys would always be back in his possession within a month.”

“So who owns the house now?” John O’Toole asked.

“I believe it is one of Donny’s children,” Arthur said, drawing out the last word as he looked through the file again. “Yes. His eldest daughter. Jennifer Harrison. She wrote to the Ministry last Friday asking for help. Her father was, in her own words, ‘very bigheaded’, and he doubted that the Ministry could do anything to help. He seemed to believe that any input from us would just make the situation worse.”

“So why doesn’t Jennifer Harrison live there?” Susan asked, before turning toward Pansy. “Don’t some of these houses reject anybody who is not related to the original owners by blood?”

“They may do,” Pansy explained. “But generally they accept anybody they can ‘connect’ with, and reject anybody with whom they cannot.”

“Yes, and it sounds like Donny Harrison didn’t ‘connect’ with the place at all, despite being a blood relative,” Arthur continued. “Jennifer Harrison seems to be quite fond of the place. Apparently she wants to turn it into a holiday home, but believes it would be impossible to do that unless she can convince the house to behave itself.”

“Hmm,” Pansy said. “That’s tricky. A house that displays this much activity must be very clever, which usually means that it is also independent. It is not going to listen to any owner unless the owner can develop a good relationship with it, and give it what it wants. If this house is as lonely as it appears, it probably wants people living in it. But if it wants people living in it, why is it driving people away?”

“That is precisely what we have been asked to find out.” Arthur flipped the file back to its front page. “I would like to send somebody to Harrison Estate today, and have them stay for as long as it takes to discover this house’s intricacies, which I believe will be about one week. There is a good chance that this assignment need to be carried out over Christmas, so you will receive a substantial bonus for it.” 

Arthur looked over at Pansy again. “You do not have to take this assignment if you don’t want to. But you know as well as I do that you would be best for it.”

“I know,” Pansy said. “And I would love to do it. I’ll go home and pack once the meeting ends, and be there by 11am.”

“Are you sure?” Arthur asked. “You’ve done some really big jobs recently, and it is Christmas…”

“I am positive. It sounds exciting.” Pansy thought for a moment. “Although, if this place is as potentially dangerous as you say, it might be worth having somebody else there who is good at dealing with difficult situations. An Auror, perhaps?”

Arthur nodded. “Good idea. I’ll send a request to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement straight away.”

The older wizard waved his wand once more, and the case file flew into Pansy’s outstretched hands.

“Now that that’s sorted,” Arthur continued, “I want to remind everybody to get last week’s paperwork in by the end of today, no excuses…”

~*~

Ron Weasley was staring at the report he had been trying to finish since he sat at his desk two hours ago. It was a slow day, much to his annoyance, and he had no real choice but to get through some of the paperwork he normally did everything in his power to avoid. 

It was at times like this that he dearly wished Hermione had become an Auror. Considering the enthusiasm with which the witch talked about filing documentation at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Ron had a feeling that paperwork would be Hermione’s favourite part of a job as an Auror. She’d be bloody good at it too; the report with which Ron was currently struggling would have taken her less than an hour.

“Hey mate.” Ron looked up to see Harry standing beside his desk, looking tired but cheerful in a way that Ron’s mother said was a tell-tale sign that he had young children. To be fair, Ron’s mother said that everything about Harry now indicated that he was a father, but Ron could see the logic in this case.

“All right?” Ron asked his best mate.

“Yeah, not bad. I’m meant to pass on a message from your dad’s department, but I don’t want to disturb you from your paperwork. Should I come back later?”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Ron snarled, causing Harry to grin in response and sit down. Ron’s hatred of paperwork was something of legend across the department. A popular joke among his coworkers was to leave stacks of files on his desk after he left in the evening, to see if he blew his gasket when he came in the next day and saw them. Ron thought it was pathetic, but considering how it had worked more than once in the past, he had to admit it was also effective.

“So what’s this about Dad’s department?” 

“The boss got this from him this morning,” Harry answered, pulling something from his pocket. Ron recognised the distinct purple of an interdepartmental memo. “There’s an away mission in this fancy estate in the Cotswolds, starting straight after work today and going for about a week.”

“A week?” Ron repeated, scanning the memo. “But won’t that cut into Christmas? Dad must be having a laugh. There’s no way anybody will do it-- oh wait, hang on. There’s a bonus?”

Harry nodded. “A pretty hefty one too. And also, your dad sent through some photos of the place. Check it out.” 

“Blimey,” Ron gasped, taking the proffered photos out of Harry’s hands. “This is proper lush. This dining room is probably bigger than the Burrow. It’s like that fucking enormous house Malfoy lives in, only nicer-looking.”

“I know, right?” Harry took back the photo of the enormous bedroom, grinning at it in a way that could only be described as ‘cheeky’. “The mission sounds like a total walk in the park too, compared to what we normally have to deal with. This house is one of those old magical dwellings. You know, the ones that can think for themselves?”

“Oh yeah. Like Old Lady Grimble’s place, right? The house kept tripping me over and making laughing noises.”

“I think you’ll find that I was the one making the laughing noises, mate. But yeah, like that. Apparently this place is particularly, er… boisterous. There’s somebody from your dad’s department heading over there now. Whichever of us ends up getting this job just has to keep an eye on them, get them out if the house traps them, that sort of thing.”

Ron raised his eyebrows. “That’s it? One of us gets to stay in this lush place and get an enormous bonus, for a piss-easy job like that?”

“Yep. The only catch is that they might have to work over Christmas. Ginny would skin me alive if I volunteered. That’s the only reason why I haven’t.”

“Hmm.” Ron mulled it over. Christmas with his family was a lot of fun, of course, and he looked forward to it every year. But he had to admit that it wasn’t all great. Some things about it were annoying, like how cramped it was everywhere, and how his mother always insisted on listening to that bloody Celestina Warbeck concert, and how he always inevitably ran into his little sister and his best mate snogging in the pantry or the coat cupboard or the garden shed (an incident that ruined any hopes he might have had to get through life without ever seeing Ginny’s bare arse). It might be nice to spend one year in an enormous house without any family members, or screeching wireless, or relatives’ naked body parts. 

Plus, he could really use that bonus. Harry had introduced him to the joys of Muggle video games a couple of months ago, and he had been hankering to get himself a nice gaming setup.

“Mate,” Ron eventually said to Harry. “Do you know if anybody’s volunteered yet?”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t think so--”

Ron jumped out of his chair, brushed past a bemused Harry, and strode over to the boss’s office.

\--

At 5:30 that afternoon, Ron materialised at the front gate of Harrison Estate. 

At first, all he could do was stare. Although he could hardly say he had an eye for fine architecture, Ron was reasonably self-assured when it came to knowing what he liked and didn’t like, and he definitely liked this house. It was a bit difficult to see everything well in the dark, but with a combination of a well-cast _Lumos_ and a dozen or so strategically-placed outdoor lamps, he could see a sprawling garden bordered by hundreds of little shrubs that probably bloomed with colourful flowers in the springtime. He could also just about make out a lake and reduced-sized Quidditch pitch in the distance, and wondered idly if he should have brought his broomstick with him. The house itself stood regal and proud, almost as if it wanted to show off just how impressive it was. Ron couldn’t help but grin stupidly to himself as he strode towards the door. He was sure that he was going to enjoy this week immensely.

Ron inserted the key his boss had given him earlier that day into the lock and twisted the ornate handle. The door swung opened cleanly, as though its hinges had been freshly oiled. He stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind him.

His colleague for the week was supposed to already be there. It struck Ron at that moment that he should probably have asked who his father’s department had sent, on the off-chance that Ron knew them. He had just assumed that it was going to be some bloke his dad’s age with an unhealthy obsession for old magic stuff, since most of the people in his father’s department fit that mould. 

“Hello?” he called out. 

“In the kitchen!” came the disembodied reply of somebody who was very obviously female. Not quite what Ron expected, but he supposed it was prejudiced of him to have assumed that he would be working with a man. The more concerning thing was the fact that he was certain he knew that voice, and the sound of it sent a chill through him. 

He noticed a light to his left and walked towards it, feeling his heart rate increase a fraction in anticipation. When he stepped into the kitchen and saw who was waiting for him, that heart rate went from ‘a little fast’ to ‘bloody skyrocketing’ very quickly.

Because the sight before him was the very last thing he wanted to see. Really. He would choose to walk in on Harry and Ginny mid-coitus multiple times before choosing to see what he was seeing now.

Pansy Parkinson was sitting at the kitchen counter, a mug of some hot beverage in one hand, a quill in the other, and an expression on her face just as surprised and horrified as he imagined he was sporting himself.

For perhaps three seconds, the two of them just stared at each other. Then they spoke in perfect unison.

“Oh HELL no!”

~*~

Pansy was convinced that she was in some kind of nightmare. It was the only explanation she had for why Ron Weasley was standing in front of her, wearing a long winter coat and thoroughly stupid-looking maroon beanie, and looking for all intents and purposes as though he was planning on staying here for a while.

Pansy knew that her boss’s least appealing prodigy was an Auror, of course. It was hard to miss these things when the Daily Prophet reported on every damn move Harry Potter and his accomplices made. Thanks to some of the most insufferable exclusives in the paper’s history, Pansy was fully aware that Ron Weasley went into Auror training straight after the Battle of Hogwarts, that he dated Hermione Granger for two years before Granger presumably realised that Weasley had absolutely no desirable qualities and dumped his sorry arse, that he has been living above that joke shop his brother runs ever since, and that he thought becoming an uncle to Harry Potter’s little trio of children was one of the best things to ever happen to him; words that could only come from a man who had never been on the receiving end of a decent blow job.

What she didn’t know about Ron Weasley was why, in the name of all that is magical, he would volunteer to do a job like this with her. It wasn’t as if he did not also dislike her. Whenever they happened to pass each other in the Ministry, they both studiously ignored each other, after which time Pansy always felt the need to silently applaud herself for not giving into her desire to stick her foot out and trip him over. Weasley’s father was also well aware of her dislike for his son, as she told him so at least half a dozen times every year, and Arthur always replied by saying “well, I suppose it’s a good thing that the two of you will never have to work together”. 

Trust her luck to be proving Arthur Weasley wrong with this one.

So, yes. This was a nightmare. It had to be.

“This is a nightmare,” Weasley said. “It has to be.”

That pulled Pansy out of her reverie.

“Oh no you don’t,” she said, standing up. “This is my nightmare, not yours.”

“I said it was -a- nightmare, Parkinson,” Weasley argued back. “It can be anyone’s.”

“Exactly, and I’m saying that it is mine.”

“I… you… shut up.”

“Why are you here, Weasley?” Pansy crossed her arms over her chest. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought one of you Aurors would be volunteering for this job. Why did you volunteer, if you knew you would have to work with me?”

“That’s the thing,” Weasley answered. “I didn’t know that. Dad’s memo didn’t say anything about it.”

“And you didn’t think to, I don’t know, ASK?!”

“How was I supposed to know that Dad would let the Ministry’s Bitch Incarnate loose on a place as nice as this?”

“It must have entered your mind. You’ve seen me in your dad’s office before. You know I work for him. You must have known that there was a chance that I would be on this assignment.”

“Well, I didn’t. I didn’t know you did away assignments at all. I’d have thought they’d keep you chained to a Ministry desk after everything your father did during the war.”

Pansy blinked in surprise. She had not been expecting a remark like that. “Wow, Weasley. I thought you lot were supposed to be the ones fighting prejudice? Yet you’re standing here, saying that I should be punished for the crimes my father committed? I can see why our world idolises you now, because I figured it couldn’t possibly be for your looks or personality.”

“You know what?” Weasley snarled. “FUCK this! I’m leaving. I hear this house is dangerous, and I bloody well hope it is, and that it eats you during the night. Maybe it will be kind and devour you in your sleep, but I really, REALLY want to believe that it will eat you alive. Then I can fall asleep to the memories of your dying screams.”

“How will you have memories of my dying screams if you’re about to leave? Idiot.”

“Oh for the love of-- just stop fucking talking, right now, alright?”

“No. Now that I know how much it bothers you, I will continue to talk until my throat goes hoarse, and then I will whisper into your ear.”

By now they had reached the front door, and Weasley threw Pansy what she assumed was the ugliest look he could muster (and it was breathtakingly ugly, in all fairness to him, although Pansy felt that about all of Weasley’s facial expressions). He tried turning the handle, but it wouldn’t budge.

“What the fuck?” he said.

“It’s locked, dimwit.”

“How, though?” Weasley asked, now apparently so baffled that he forgot to swear. “I didn’t lock it when I came in.”

“Well, you must have, because it’s locked now.” 

“But--”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Pansy pulled her key out of her pocket, elbowed Weasley out of the way (possibly deliberately aiming for his ribcage in the process), and put it into the lock. She then tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t move.

“Huh?” She pulled the key out, confirmed that it was the correct key, then tried again. Still the door would not budge. 

“This doesn’t make sense.” She turned to Weasley. “Try your key.”

To her surprise, he moved over to the door without further comment. But, when three tries with his key also proved unsuccessful, her surprise gave way to annoyance.

“Did you break the fucking lock when you came in here?”

“No! How the bloody hell would I even do that?”

“I don’t know. I’m not familiar with the ways of the moron.” She pulled out her wand and tried an _Alohamora_ , but the result was the same.

“This makes no fucking sense,” she uttered.

“No shit,” Weasley murmured back.

Pansy frowned, thinking back to what Arthur had said in the morning meeting, about the small child who had been locked in his bedroom.

Without another word, she turned on her heel and strode back toward the kitchen.

“Hey!” Weasley yelled, tramping after her. “Come back here. Help me get this bloody door unlocked!”

“That’s what I’m trying to do, dipshit. Now shut up.” Pansy pulled the case file from her bag, opened it up and flipped through to the incident report section.

“Ahh… right…” she murmured to herself “there’s one here… and here… and here’s another… hmmm…”

“Care to share your findings with the room?” Weasley asked. “You know, just if you have time, and you’re not too busy?”

Pansy did not appreciate the sarcasm. “I’m looking for past instances of Harrison Estate locking its doors,” she said.

“Wait.” Weasley looked stupidly behind him, despite the front door not being visible from the kitchen. “You mean the front door just locked itself?”

“I think so.” Pansy skim-read the case entries “...two days… nothing worked… door unlocked itself randomly… 36 hours, that’s the one with the kid… two people in the larder for, blimey, five days… nothing worked again… eventually unlocked... Fuck.” Pansy looked up.

“What?” Weasley asked.

Pansy looked back at the reports and sighed, raking a hand through her long, dark hair. “This house seems to like locking its doors. It’s one of its quirks.”

“Quirks?”

“Yes, quirks. All magical houses have different little things they tend to do.” Pansy ran a finger down the report page. “In all of these cases, one of the doors locked itself, and nothing anybody tried to unlock the door seemed to work. But after a certain amount of time, the door unlocked itself again. None of these entries report a direct cause for the door to unlock. It just happened.”

Weasley’s eyes narrowed. “How long did it take?”

“Depends.” Pansy consulted the file again. “Once it was two days. Another time it was 36 hours. The longest one I can see here is two weeks.”

“What?” Pansy could see Weasley’s face starting to turn red. “So I could be stuck in this house, with you, for two weeks?!”

“Possibly,” Pansy said, closing the file. “At any rate, you’re probably stuck here until this job is finished.”

“That’s just bloody brilliant.” Weasley pinched the bridge of his nose. “And what exactly is your job?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Pansy answered. “Especially when I have to use short words.”

Weasley groaned. “I really, really fucking hate you, Parkinson.”

“The feeling is mutual. But, since you haven’t hexed me yet, I almost feel like I owe you one.” Pansy opened the file again, and pushed it in Weasley’s direction. “My job involves going to magical houses and working out their personalities.”

Weasley looked confused, but most people did when Pansy tried to explain her job to them. “Sorry, what? You work out the houses’ personalities?”

“Mm-hmm.” She pointed to the file. “This house has been causing trouble for the past few decades, and the new owner wants to know how to treat it properly, so she can use it. Magical houses have minds of their own, so they will retaliate in bad ways if their owners don’t treat them correctly. It is my job to work out what the house wants in an owner, and to create detailed reports on it, which end up being more like instruction guides for future owners.”

“Huh.” Weasley looked back down at the file. “And are you any good at doing that?”

Pansy nodded. “The best.”

Weasley snorted. “I see you’re as bigheaded as ever.”

“Not really,” Pansy disagreed. “I’m rubbish at a lot of stuff, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m the best at this.”

Weasley rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

Pansy, sensing that the conversation was over, settled back into her chair. “So, while I am doing my job, your job is to keep me safe.”

“Yeah,” Weasley said, scrubbing at the back of his neck. “Don’t remind me.”

“I think I will keep reminding you, actually,” Pansy retorted. “I’m worried that you might ‘conveniently forget’ and leave me to be strangled by the hat stand.”

“As if that’s a real thing.”

“I’ve seen it happen.”

Weasley blinked, and then shook his head, as though trying to forcefully remove that image from his brain. “Alright, fine. I don’t have to protect you while you’re sleeping or eating or shitting or anything like that, do I?”

“Ugh, no. Just when I’m working.” Pansy glanced at the clock on the wall. “I plan to start my work at 9am tomorrow. Can you be ready by then?”

“Somehow I think I will manage,” Weasley said, rolling his eyes again.

“Good. And whenever we are not working, why don’t we just stay out of each other’s way? It’s a big house, so I doubt we will need to see each other at all.”

“That’s the silver lining I was hoping for since the moment I walked into this kitchen.” Weasley stood up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’m going to find a bedroom and stay in it until tomorrow morning. Have you picked a room yet?”

Pansy nodded. “If you go up the big staircase and turn left, my room is the last door on the right. So do me a favour and turn right at the top of the stairs and take the room as far away from mine as possible.”

“With pleasure.” Weasley strode out of the kitchen without another word, and Pansy let out a long sigh. She really, really hoped she would be able to figure this house out soon, because she did not want to be stuck here, for multiple weeks, with Ron Weasley.

\--

Tuesday (5 Days Until Christmas)

Pansy’s alarm blared to life at 7am on Tuesday morning, rousing her from what had been a noteworthy slumber.

Pansy had always had a great liking for large, luxurious bedrooms, and she considered it something of a professional duty to always sleep in the biggest bedroom she could find when she was on an away mission. The room she had chosen in Harrison Estate came with a king-size bed; brick fireplace; rich, purple curtains; thick, off-white carpeting; and its own matching, private ensuite. The room was so lovely that Pansy had half a mind to see if Parkinson Manor would tolerate its own master bedroom being refurbished in a similar way when she was finally allowed to live there again.

Despite its welcoming appearance, the actual conditions of the bedroom were not ideal. It was bone-chillingly cold, for starters, and she was unable to get a fire going, despite multiple attempts. It was also strangely noisy; tiny, repetitive sounds, such as the wall clock ticking and the shower head dripping, seemed to amplify in volume once Pansy laid her head onto the too-hard pillows. The mattress also disagreed with her, feeling hard and bumpy along her back. 

After trying to fall asleep for half an hour and becoming, if anything, more awake, Pansy got up and moved to one of the adjacent bedrooms. She was reasonably certain that her moving would not make a difference, but she could not know that for sure until she tried it. Sure enough, the conditions in the slightly smaller bedroom were the same, despite a similarly welcoming appearance that would suggest otherwise. She tried a third bedroom, just to be certain, and the same was true again.

Pansy had experienced this phenomenon on away missions before. Cold, uncomfortable bedrooms were a common indication that the magical household was unhappy with its inhabitants. Unfortunately, apart from being able to deduce that the cause of its unhappiness was to do with her, Pansy had no idea what this house’s issue could be. She also did not want to try and work it out until Weasley and his Auror training were nearby. This house had been particularly exuberant in its actions in the past, and she was worried that, if she did something the house really did not like, there could be consequences more severe than a freezing bedroom. 

Pansy came to the unfortunate conclusion that she had little choice but to go back to the first bedroom and try to sleep again. It took her at least another hour, but she eventually managed to nod off at around 1am.

And now, six hours later, Pansy extended a tired arm and slapped her alarm into silence after several blind attempts. Her first drowsy thought was that it was a cruel, cruel world that insisted she open her eyes and leave the warm comfort of the bed.

Wait. All of the drowsiness left her at record speed as the importance of that thought sunk in. Warm? Comfort? 

She opened her eyes and pressed lightly on the mattress below her. Unlike the horrible, hard, bumpy monstrosity she had forced herself to sleep on, the mattress was now smooth and supportive, with what she considered to be just the right amount of bounce. Better still, the pillows below her head were soft and fluffy; just the way she liked them.

As delighted as Pansy was with the change, she was also thoroughly confused. What in Merlin’s name could have caused it?

It was at that point that Pansy noticed one other change: Snoring. Not loud, or even unpleasant-sounding snoring, but snoring none-the-less. It was coming from somewhere to her right. Pansy looked over and saw, to her horror, that she was not alone. 

“What the HELL?!” she yelled, grabbing her pillow and unleashing the full wrath of her morning fury on her unexpected bedfellow.

“Huh? Ow! Geroff!” Weasley woke up at once, throwing his long arms over his head to block Pansy’s attacks. “Why are you here?”

“‘Why am I here’!?” Pansy screeched. “This is my room! You came in!”

“No I didn’t!” Weasley shuffled away from the still-flailing pillow as quickly as he could, falling out of the bed in the process. “Why, in the name of Merlin’s hairy ballsack, would I do that?”

“I don’t know! Maybe you wanted to cop a feel?”

Weasley straightened up, folded his arms, and glared at Pansy with a not-inconsiderable amount of loathing. “Even if I were the sort of bloke who got into girls’ beds while they were sleeping-- which I am not, because that is fucking disgusting-- I would not be getting into your bed, Parkinson. You’re not my type.”

“And for that, I am more grateful than I can say.” Pansy considered throwing the pillow she was still clutching at Weasley’s ugly face, but decided that would be a bit too childish. She instead put the pillow down, took a deep breath, and pushed through her annoyance to think about what Weasley had said. “So if you didn’t move yourself here…”

“Could the house have moved me?” Weasley asked. “Can a house even do that?”

Pansy nodded slowly. “Some houses can, and this house definitely has done in the past. I will see if I can work out why.”

“Fine.” Weasley strode towards the door, looking as eager as Pansy was for him to be out of there. But she could not let him leave without mentioning the second-biggest elephant in the room.

“By the way,” she said. Weasley turned around and raised his eyebrows at her. “I hope the rest of your wardrobe is less ridiculous than those PJ’s.”

Weasley looked down at his bright orange Chudley Cannons winter pyjamas, before fixing Pansy with a look of annoyance. “My mother got me these.”

“Oh, right. Sorry. That detail makes them much cooler.”

“Fuck you.” 

Weasley stormed off, leaving Pansy to have her shower in peace. She felt a large, knobbly mattress lump press against her right arse cheek as she slid out of the bed, and sighed. That was not a good sign.

She shivered against the sudden chill of the surrounding air as she padded to the bathroom.

~*~

Ron waited until the last reasonable minute before going to breakfast. He hoped that Parkinson had already come and gone, and that he would be able to enjoy 15 further minutes of solitude before having to spend the next eight or nine hours in that prissy bint’s company.

He honestly reckoned he’d work with Malfoy over Pansy Parkinson. Malfoy, at least, didn’t try to get all of Hogwarts to hand his best mate over to Voldemort. But his dislike of Parkinson wasn’t even about that. Not really. It was the fact that she acted towards him, his family, and most of his friends as though she was ‘above’ them. It had been eight years since the Battle of Hogwarts, and Ron knew that Parkinson still had no access to her family’s wealth or prestige. Hermione had said once, a couple of years ago, that she now lived in a small flat in the outskirts of Muggle London. And still she looked down at him.

His dad knew how Ron felt about Parkinson, but he did not agree with him. In fact, his dad often said that she was a joy to work with. Snarky, sarcastic, and from a posh Pureblood background, yes, but she was also very funny, very clever, and, apparently, very good at her job. At that point Ron usually got fed up and said something about how his dad liking her did not mean he had to, which then caused his dad to say ‘no, but you might find that you like her regardless.’

His dad was a weird old man, when he wanted to be.

Ron came into the kitchen to find that his hopes had been in vain, for Parkinson was sitting at the head of the long table, sipping a hot drink and looking through that case file of hers. She looked up when he came in, her annoyed face probably neatly mirroring his own.

“Do not even think about sitting next to me,” she said.

“I’d rather drink poison,” he replied, moving to the other end of the table and collapsing onto a chair.

“Ow!”

Parkinson snorted in amusement. “What happened? Did you sit on yourself?” 

“No,” Ron growled, standing up and inspecting the chair on which he had just tried to sit. It looked fine to him, but it had felt like some of the springs had broken through the fabric and stabbed him in the bum. 

“Just checking for an exposed spring,” he explained gruffly. He tried, more carefully, to sit down again, and leapt back off with a grunt of pain. 

He shot Parkinson a glare, daring her to laugh. To her credit, she no longer seemed to find his situation funny. She was looking at him thoughtfully over her coffee mug, which she was holding loosely with both hands. 

“What?” he asked.

Parkinson took a few seconds to answer. “I sat on that chair yesterday, and I didn’t feel any exposed springs or anything. The chair might be hurting you on purpose.”

Ron glanced back at the chair, which still lacked any visible signs of exposed springs. Indeed, it looked identical to all the others surrounding the table. “Why?”

“I’m not sure,” Parkinson answered. “Try sitting in the one next to it.”

Ron frowned, but did as he was told. The next chair had the same problem.

“Hmm,” Parkinson murmured, paying no attention to Ron’s yelping. “Try one of the chairs in the middle of the table.”

“No! It feels like the bloody things are trying to kill me, arse first!”

“Oh, honestly.” Parkinson waved her wand impatiently at him, in a series of movements he had seen his mother do a lot when he was a kid. The tender feeling in his buttocks went away immediately. Ron was actually kind of impressed. That pain relief spell was a hard one. He knew, because Ginny, a mighty witch in her own right, had been trying to master it for months. And yet he had just seen Parkinson do it with ease. He had to hand it to her; the woman knew her magic.

“Will you repair my arse again, if I need it?” he asked her.

“Anything to ensure I don’t have to hear you whining for hours on end. Now, sit down.”

Ron took a couple of steps towards Parkinson, chose a chair about two or three spaces away from her, and sat down. 

“Well?” she asked.

He stood up again, looking back at the new chair. “It still hurt, but not as much.”

“I see.” Parkinson leafed through her file, stopping about one third of the way through it. After a few seconds, she pulled a face that Ron was sure could not be a good sign.

With a sigh, Parkinson pulled back the chair directly next to her. “Take a seat here.”

Ron grimaced. “Really?”

“Yes, really. Hurry up.”

Thinking idly that a ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ would be nice, Ron strode over to Parkinson’s side and sat down.

That was more like it. Instead of feeling like he was being attacked by half a dozen coiled metal spikes, this chair was soft and bouncy. Better still, it was warm; ; it was like a little fireplace had been placed under him.

“Huh.” Ron looked up. Parkinson was shuffling in her seat. 

“My chair just warmed up,” she said.

“Mine too.” Ron mimicked her shuffling action. “But it’s nice. Much better than the others.”

“I can imagine.” Parkinson suddenly stood up. “I’m going to try one more thing. I’ll be back in a minute. Take note of how the chair feels.”

“O...kay.” Ron did not understand, and he figured Parkinson would think him too dense to explain anything. Right now, however, he could not be bothered to ask.

“Is the coffee there up for grabs?” he said instead, pointing to the large pot on the table.

“Help yourself,” Parkinson said, already leaving the room.

Ron poured himself a large mug, adding milk and about half a dozen teaspoons of sugar. As he took his first sip of the sweet brew, he noticed that his seat had suddenly cooled down. It still felt comfortable, but the loss of heat was disappointing.

Parkinson returned a moment later, and Ron told her about it.

“As I thought,” she said, sitting down again.

“Oh! Wait! It’s back!” Ron said, grinning. Few things were nicer than a warm chair in the middle of winter.

“Again, as I thought.” Parkinson raked a hand through her hair. That seemed to be a habit of hers. “How was your room last night?”

“My room?” Ron thought back to the unusable fireplace, the rock-hard pillows, and the lumpy mattress. “Pretty shit, actually. Cold, and the bed was lumpy. I might try one of the other rooms tonight. Your room’s alright, though.”

“No, it isn’t,” Parkinson said, shaking her head. “Or at least, it wasn’t last night. But it was much nicer this morning. Then, once you left, it became awful again.”

Ron frowned. “So, are you saying that I made your room better?”

“Sort of,” Parkinson said. “I think it is more that us being in that room together made it better. In the same way, us sitting next to each other now is making the chairs nicer, while you sitting far away caused the chair to stab you.”

“OK, that all sounds… weird, but consistent. What does it mean?”

“I can’t be sure yet, but it seems that the house wants us to always be near each other.”

“Aw, what?” Ron could not hide his disappointment, even if he wanted to. His desire to spend all of his non-work time in this house as far away from Parkinson as possible was turning more and more into a pipe dream. “Why would the house care about that?”

“Magical houses are motivated by their personalities,” Parkinson explained. “There must be some element of this house’s personality that values proximity between its residents. That also might explain why it moved you to my room in the middle of the night.”

“Hmph. You’d think a house that can Apparate people between rooms would also be able to tell that we don’t like each other.”

“It might be able to, and just not care.” Parkinson glanced at her watch and stood up. “If you hurry up with your breakfast, I’d like to go to the library.”

“Why?” Ron asked, pulling a face. He hated libraries. They reminded him too much of studying.

“I’m hoping to find memoirs of the previous owners there,” Parkinson said, taking her plates to the kitchen sink. “Magical houses normally absorb the personalities of the people who lived in them. If I find out more about the Harrison family, that should give me a clue as to why it exhibits these quirks. Then I will do some experiments, see how the house reacts to them, and figure out how to get it to unlock its front door.”

“Yeah, well, it’d be great if you could make that your top priority,” Ron said, downing the rest of his coffee. The whole chair issue meant that he had no time for a sit-down breakfast. A sandwich would have to do.

“I assure you, Weasley, that getting that door unlocked is my only priority,” Parkinson replied, pointing her wand at the sink. 

~*~

Anybody whose business involves old, stately manors, knows that one particular point of pride for their owners is their libraries. The library at Parkinson Manor held about 300,000 volumes, including every book that had ever been written about the Goblin Rebellions until the early 1900s. Malfoy Manor had an impressive 500,000, and Draco had been particularly proud of his comic book collection (even after Pansy had told him, multiple times, that comics did not count as good literature). The library at Harrison Estate was similar in size to Parkinson Manor’s, although it took Pansy all of three seconds to notice that the books were of an entirely different nature. Instead of volume upon volume depicting the myriad ways witches and wizards used to decapitate golbinfolk, or explaining the best methods for testing blood purity in newborns, these shelves contained books with titles like _The Continuing Importance of International Magic Cooperation_ , _The 100 Greatest Magical Romances of the 19th Century_ , and _Potions for Pranksters: The Best Brews for Belly Laughs_. When Weasley entered the room a couple of minutes after her, carrying a plate piled with no fewer than three sandwiches, she pointed out the potion book.

“Finally! Potions I can get behind!” Weasley’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree as he grabbed the book and made his way to a nearby desk. Pansy noticed the caution with which he sat down, and smirked. 

“Are you alright to stay there until I need your help?” she asked.

“Yep. As long as the house doesn’t swing an axe at me for being less than a foot away from you, or something,” he responded.

Pansy snorted. “Well, just in case, I won’t hurry back.”

“Fuck you.”

Pansy allowed herself an amused smirk before turning toward the shelves.

She had seen enough household libraries to know that all of them held family memoirs, and most kept them in a special, separate section. It did not take her long to find what she was after. Fifty or so volumes, each titled with the name of the Harrison family member whose life it detailed. The oldest book was almost as old as the Manor itself, while the newest - that of Donny Harrison - was brand spanking new. The library evidently had had a Memoir Charm built into its construction, which ensured that the memoir of each family member was bound and shelved as soon as that person died. 

Pansy pulled out the oldest two memoirs, as well as those of John Harrison (Donny Harrison’s uncle) and his wife, Barbara. Next, she sat herself at the desk opposite Weasley, opened up the oldest volume, and started reading.

~*~

_Reginald Harrison was born in Sheffield in 1423. The son of cattle farmers, he was the first in his branch of the Harrison line to display signs of magic._

_He attended Hogwarts from 1434-1440, was a Ravenclaw, and would have been a Prefect were it not for his propensity to cause trouble. Clever, cunning enough to bring some of his Slytherin classmates to shame, and strongly devoted to having fun, Reginald served no fewer than 150 detentions while a student, most for petty (and humorous) instances of rule-breaking. Among the most notable of these was when he entered the Owlery during his fourth year and charmed the owls different colours of the rainbow with a spell of his own design (the counter-curse for which Violette Biggins, Professor of Charms at the time, had to devote several months towards creating), and when, in his sixth year, he convinced the Hogwarts house elves to serve nothing but plates of pan-fried mushrooms for dinner every night for a week (a prank that, although not enjoyable, was immensely helpful in reducing a terrible overgrowth of rogue fungi in the Forbidden Forest)._

_After leaving Hogwarts, Reginald worked for the Ministry of Magic for several years before opening a public house in Hogsmeade. It was there that he met Josephine Clifton; the woman who became his wife three years later. Josephine was an only child from a comparatively wealthy family, and the unexpected death of her father left her with a sizeable inheritance and the sudden attention of many male suitors. Her reason for choosing Reginald was simple: he was the only man who made her laugh._

_After Reginald and Josephine married, they started work on Harrison Estate. It took several years to build, and they called upon most of their friends to contribute, whether that was by helping to build a room, carving a piece of furniture, or adding vegetation to a section of the grounds. Reginald and Josephine said this was so their house would quite literally be ‘the work of love and friendship’._

_Reginald and Josephine had five children: William (b. 1446), Julia (b. 1447), Thomas (b.1449), Georgina (b.1453), and Henry (b. 1456). Even with all of their children, Reginald and Josephine felt that Harrison Estate was ‘not full enough of people’, so they turned the estate into a public house, hotel, and community space. Both Reginald’s family and the estate itself were so popular that it remained full to bursting with people for the rest of his life. At least twenty of his long-stay guests said that Reginald brought fun, laughter, and love into their lives, and many more swore that the the house was regularly in on the fun._

\--

_John Harrison was born in Harrison Estate in 1872. The eldest of four, John was by far the cheekiest and most boisterous of his siblings. He spent his earliest years climbing the walls of Harrison Estate, sneaking into the kitchen and buttering up the house elves until they gave him ice cream, and turning his siblings’ stuffed toys into fluffy, bubble-breathing dragons. When his parents considered whether or not they should punish him for his cheekiness, their eventual conclusion was that doing so would go against the teachings of the fine Harrisons before him._

_John attended Hogwarts from 1883-1889. He was sorted into Gryffindor and eventually became a Prefect. He played Beater in the house Quidditch team from his third year to his sixth year, before quitting in his 7th year to concentrate on his NEWTs. At least, he said it was so he could concentrate on his NEWTs, but the reality appears to be that he decided he would rather spend time with his girlfriend, Barbara Bright, than fly around on a broomstick smacking balls with a bat several evenings a week._

_John and Barbara were besotted with each other, and they married straight out of Hogwarts on the grounds of Harrison Estate. One evening soon after their wedding, John and Barbara were discussing the concepts of love and friendship, and John said that they were very lucky to have found each other as soon as they did. Barbara agreed, and said that she wished other people could find their friends and lovers so easily. At that, John suggested that they should try and help some of these people along._

_John and Barbara spent the remaining eight decades of their lives running the estate and taking care of the people within it. As well as being the eventual owners of the Estate, John and Barbara were also heavily involved with the community. John in particular was notorious for his tendency to use the pranking charms taught to him by his father on the rooms, furniture, and other household items in an effort to bring like-minded people closer together. Among his favourite charms were the Discomfort Charm, which he would cast on chairs and sofas to make them very uncomfortable until the person trying to sit down chose a seat next to somebody else; the Cross-Room Amplification Charm, where the sounds coming from one room could be heard clearly by people in another room in the estate, regardless of how far away the two rooms were; and the standard Locking Charm, which he used to trap two or more people in a room until they had proven that they were getting along. As questionable as John’s methods might seem to some, he had an uncanny ability to be able to tell when two or more people would ‘connect’ with each other. It is believed that his efforts resulted in at least 200 marriages, and well over a thousand life-long friendships._

_John also had the unfortunate tendency to ‘check in’ on the potential romances he established, by pressing his ear to bedroom doors. It was easy to tell if his efforts were proving successful, because he would do a fist-pumping victory dance all the way to his next destination._

~*~

Ron was lost in the tenth book he had found on joke magic when the sound of Parkinson slamming shut the last of her books startled him.

“Guess what,” she said.

“What?” Ron asked, guessing from the unhappy look on Parkinson’s face that he was not going to like her answer.

“This house,” she answered, gesturing outward, “wants us to be friends.”

Ron looked around the room, as though hoping there would be some visual sign that she was wrong, before coming to the conclusion that no such sign existed and turning back to her. “Are you serious?”

“Deadly, unfortunately.” She trailed a finger down the roll of parchment on which she had been making notes. “Apparently the last Harrison who lived here used to cast charms all around the place. The charms did the same sort of stuff that the house has been doing to us, and he cast them in order to bring people together.”

Ron took a moment to digest that information. “I guess that answers what I was wondering this morning. The house definitely can’t tell that we don’t like each other. If it could, there is no way it would be trying to make us friends.”

Parkinson nodded slowly. “I think you might be right.” She moved her finger along the parchment again. “John Harrison was apparently really good at telling whether or not people would get along. He would cast the charms to nudge them in the right direction; the ‘direction of friendship’, as it were. So, yes. The house seems to have absorbed the concepts of prank magic from John Harrison, and it shares his love of proximity between people, but it must not be able to sense how individual dwellers feel about each other like Harrison could.” She looked up and offered Ron a brief smile. “Smart observation, Weasley.”

Ron shrugged. “Maybe I’m not as dense as you think, eh?”

“We’ll see.” Parkinson stood up and stretched her arms to the ceiling. Or, at least as high towards the ceiling as she could manage. She was surprisingly short and small, considering how big, for want of a better word, her personality was.

“So,” Ron said, also standing. “What do we do? It’s not like we’re going to actually become friends.”

“Obviously.” Parkinson picked up her books and strode towards the bookshelves, leaving Ron to follow her. “But we might be able to, er, ‘appease’ the house, as it were, if we act like we’re friends.”

Ron raised his eyebrows. “If we act like we’re friends?” he repeated.

“Mmm.” Parkinson slotted the books in their correct positions on the shelves. “I will do some experiments tomorrow, to try and work out what can be done specifically to make the house happy. But until then, as long as we keep sitting next to each other when we are eating, we will hopefully be alright.”

Ron scrubbed at the back of his neck with his palm. “Okay. What about sleeping though? The house moved me last night, so it must want us to sleep in the same room, right?”

Parkinson’s face screwed up. “Merlin, I hope not.” She drummed two or three fingers against her chin in thought. “It might be that the house wants us to not be so obviously hostile towards each other that we take bedrooms at opposite ends of the house. How about you move into the room next to mine tonight? That way we are as close as we can be without being in the same room. That’s what I would do if I were staying somewhere with a friend.”

Ron nodded slowly. “Yeah. Me too. Alright, I’ll move my stuff after dinner.”

~*~

Pansy shut the door to her bedroom several hours later, after wishing Weasley a half-hearted ‘goodnight’, to which he responded with an equally half-hearted ‘mmm’.

The room was just as cold as it had been the night before. Not a good sign, but Pansy could not recall reading anything in the Harrison memoirs about Cooling Charms being used regularly in the house. Perhaps these bedrooms were just naturally chilly at night? It was winter, after all.

After changing into her pyjamas and completing her evening ablutions, she climbed into bed and attempted to bury herself under the covers. At that point, it became clear that the bedrooms were not just naturally chilly at night, because the pillows and mattress were so hard and lumpy that she might as well have been resting on a pile of rocks. The cold was also so permeating that the duvet was completely ineffective.

Pansy curled into as tight a ball as she could, screwed her eyes shut, and tried to will herself to sleep. It worked about as well as she thought it would, and she gave up after ten minutes. She sat up, pointed her wand at the lamp on her bedside table, and brought her knees up to her chest. This, she thought to herself, is bollocks.

There was a knock on her door. 

“Come in,” she called.

Weasley’s pyjamas, she swore, were even more orange than they had been that morning. Any brighter, and they would be emitting their own light source.

“It’s like trying to sleep in a freezer in there,” Weasley said.

Pansy nodded. “I suppose you’d better get over here.”

As soon as Weasley started walking across the room, the temperature rose. It was like stepping into a warm bath. When he climbed into the bed, the mattress and pillows instantly softened underneath her. Within seconds, the room was as warm and comfortable as it had felt that morning.

“So,” said Weasley, bringing Pansy out of her reverie. “This is really fucking weird.”

Pansy huffed inelegantly. “Yes it is.”

“At least this bed is enormous.”

“Mmm. Actually, there is one thing I would like to try.” She picked up her wand and waved it along the space between them. The bed split down the middle, and the half on which Weasley was sitting moved a couple of inches to the right as the split side repaired itself.

“There,” Pansy said. “At least this way there’s a bit of space between us.”

Weasley nodded. “Better than nothing, I guess.”

Pansy slid back into the covers. To her relief, her transfiguration of the bed had not caused the mattress to harden again.

Pansy extinguished the lamp as Weasley settled himself into a more horizontal position.

“Just do me a favour, Weaselbee,” she said. 

“What?”

“Try not to jerk off while you’re in here.”

Weasley let out an irritated snort. “I can’t even tell if you’re joking or not. Do you think I was raised in a barn?”

Pansy bit back a chuckle. “Admittedly, no. But that was what we all used to say about you in our common room.”

“Of course it was. You Slytherins are such bellends. Well, I wasn’t. For one thing, there usually is enough room to swing a cat in a barn.”

This time, Pansy’s chuckle came out before she could bite it back.

\--

Wednesday (4 Days Until Christmas)

The sound of Pansy’s alarm on Wednesday morning was, while not exactly welcome, considerably less awful than it had been the day before. As her father often used to say, a good night’s sleep can work wonders.

Pansy turned the alarm off and sat up. The first thing she noticed was that two beds had morphed themselves back into one during the night. She rolled her eyes, but she supposed she could hardly blame the house for that. If she had found that a piece of her furniture had been cut in half, she would also want to return it to its original state. Still, she hoped the house would at least allow her to split the bed that evening. Just knowing that there was some non-bed space separating her from Weasley had made it much easier for her to get to sleep.

Speaking of Weasley, the second thing Pansy noticed was that he was lying there, on his side, looking almost as if he was still sleeping, were it not for the fact that his eyes were screwed shut unnaturally tightly. 

“Come on, Weasley. Get up. I want you out of here.”

“Mrrhhh.”

“Mrrhhh nothing. Out. You ruin the look of the room.”

“Mrh, no. Fuck off,” Weasley bit back, burrowing further into the covers.

Bloody hell. And she thought she was not a morning person. Clucking her tongue impatiently, Pansy picked up her wand, pointed it at him, and thought _Levicorpus!_

“Argh!” Weasley finally opened his eyes, for what was presumably the sole purpose of glaring daggers at Pansy from his new and thoroughly awkward position: suspended by his ankle in mid-air.

“If you ever wonder why people don’t like you,” Weasley growled, his face turning an unappealing shade of puce, “this is why. Put me down!”

“I don’t know,” Pansy said, cocking her head to the side. “Now that I’m seeing you from this angle, you provide an interesting contrast to the rest of the room. I might just leave you here and enjoy the aesthetic.”

She thought, based on her past interactions with the freckled-faced git, that Weasley would respond by getting angrier and flailing uselessly; something that Pansy would find hysterically funny. Instead, he suddenly and inexplicably calmed down, and fixed Pansy with a smirk that was only slightly ruined by the fact that he was upside-down.

“Parkinson,” he said, “if you want to ‘enjoy my aesthetic’ from different angles, all you have to do is ask.”

“Eugh!” Pansy recoiled, casting _Liberacorpus_ as quickly as her non-verbal spellcasting capabilities would allow. Weasley fell back onto the bed just as Pansy leapt off it.

“I really did not think that would work as well as it did,” Weasley said, smirk still firmly in place.

“You underestimate how repulsive the idea of voluntarily looking at you actually is to me,” Pansy retorted.

“If you say so.”

“I do. Emphatically.” Pansy jabbed her wand at the door, which opened so enthusiastically that it smacked against the adjacent wall. “Now, for the last time. Get out.”

~*~

The good mood Ron had derived from getting one up on Parkinson had disappeared without a trace by the time he made it down to breakfast. For one thing, the hot water in his shower had stopped working, so he had had to endure five minutes of freezing cold in order to wash himself. After his shower, he opened his suitcase only to find that all of its contents had disappeared. He wasted at least twenty minutes searching his room, but the only clothes he could find were his pyjamas and his uniform from yesterday. He had no choice but to wear the uniform, day-old underwear and all; a circumstance made all the more irritating by the fact that it rendered his freezing cold shower an almost complete waste of time and effort. Then, on his way to the kitchen, he tried opening the front door once again. It remained as resolutely locked as ever. He could not say that he had expected anything different, but he had hoped that some miracle might grace him after the rest of the bad luck he had had to endure. Apparently not.

Parkinson was already at the table, eating a bowl of cereal and reading her case file again. He threw himself into the seat next to her, sighing in some relief as the chair warmed up straight away.

“Ooh, that’s nice,” Parkinson said. She leaned back and smiled as the heat from the chair worked its way into her. “The hot water in my shower was a little temperamental.”

Ron groaned, realising what that probably meant. “Mine wasn’t working at all.”

Parkinson bolted upright and looked sharply at him, scrutinising his face as if to determine whether he was joking. He must have looked convincing, because soon she was echoing his groan. “Is a little privacy too much to ask for?” she said, now looking at, and seemingly directly her question towards, the ceiling.

“I hope the house will be alright with us using the same bathroom at different times. Because if it wants us to be in the bathroom at the same time, I’ll just not bathe,” Ron said. 

Parkinson wrinkled her nose, but did not disagree. She instead nudged the coffee pot and a stack of toast in his direction. 

“Oh, also, have you seen my stuff?” Ron asked, pouring himself a coffee and trying to locate the sugar bowl. “I had most of it in my suitcase, but it was empty when I opened it this morning.”

“Really?” Parkinson frowned, and turned a couple of pages in the case file. “Hmm. OK, this house has been known to rearrange its contents on occasion. Did you look in the wardrobes and drawers?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t there either.” Having finally located the sugar, Ron got busy adding his normal quarter of a cup or so of it to his coffee. He didn’t notice the look of wry amusement Parkinson was giving him as he did so.

“Well,” she finally said, once Ron was done augmenting his breakfast. “Today I want to make note of everything the house has been known to do, and see if I can find out more about the circumstances surrounding its actions. This is all after locating your things, of course.”

“What?” Ron asked, a piece of toast suspended halfway towards his mouth. “You want to help me find my stuff?”

“Of course,” Parkinson said, as if it were obvious. “We can’t have you not knowing where your possessions are. That would be dreadful.”

She stood up, gathering her plates and taking them to the sink. “I’m going to brush my teeth. Come up to my bedroom when you’re done, and we’ll start looking.”

“Er, okay.”

Parkinson left the kitchen, and Ron squinted at his half-finished toast in confusion. Pansy Parkinson had just declared that she was going to help him with something. Not only that, but she seemed intent on helping without any expectation of a reward or exchange of favours. It was not a gesture that Ron would have noticed in most people. But from Parkinson; a woman who Ron had always thought did not care at all about other people’s feelings and hardships, it seemed all the more noteworthy.

He did wish she had not gone ahead of him, though. His seat had become cold again.

~*~

Locating Weasley’s possessions took all of ten seconds. Once he had joined Pansy in her bedroom, she opened her wardrobe to take out a spare scarf, and saw a bunch of clothing in there that she did not recognise. The extra-tall Auror uniform was something of a giveaway.

“Weasley?” she said. “I’ve found your things.”

Weasley strode over, his hands on his hips as he scrutinised the wardrobe’s contents.

“Yep, that’s my stuff,” he clarified, looking severely put-out. “D’you think this means the house wants us to share the wardrobe too?”

Pansy considered the question. “It might just mean that the house has a particular aesthetic ideal. Perhaps it wants to completely fill one wardrobe before it starts filling up another, for instance.” 

She studied the wardrobe layout. Her clothes, which she had unpacked on Monday, now occupied the left side. Each type of garment was in its own section, and since she had only brought a week’s worth of clothes with her, none of the sections were full. Weasley’s stuff was organised similarly on the right side. 

“To be honest, though,” she said, “it looks more like the house wants us to share it, yes.”

Weasley sighed, perching himself on the edge of the bed. “The only people I have shared bedrooms and wardrobes with are my brothers, some close friends, and girlfriends.”

Pansy nodded in agreement. “This feels like when I went on a holiday in France some years ago. With Draco.”

Weasley pulled a disgusted face. “Parkinson, please spare me the details of yours and Malfoy’s relationship. I don’t think I can stand it, even if it does help us to unlock the front door.”

“Ah,” Pansy said. “I see that you, like everybody else, assume that Draco and I were a couple.”

“Well, yeah. Weren’t you? Aren’t you still?”

“No, and no. We grew up together. He’s like a brother. He and his mother are like my family. Especially now that my actual family are all dead.”

Weasley looked up, and Pansy saw something akin to sympathy in his eyes. She looked away. She was past the point of needing sympathy, particularly from somebody who a) did not like her, and b) came from a family so large that they were probably inescapable. And anyway, it was not relevant to the topic at hand.

“My point,” she continued, “is that we went on this holiday, and I was reluctant to spend large amounts of money. So we travelled around France, staying in a different place every night. It was cheaper for us to share rooms, beds, bathrooms, everything. We also sat close to each other if we were in crowded places, because we were more comfortable with being in each other’s personal spaces than anybody else’s.”

Weasley nodded, his brow furrowed as he took the information in. “So, does the house think we are like friends on holiday? Or that we should be?”

“I can’t say for sure,” Pansy answered honestly. “But it is consistent with the history of this place. A lot of the people who lived here would have been having an inexpensive holiday. Perhaps some people arrived here as strangers, then John Harrison or one of his ancestors used his pranking magic to bring them together, and they eventually became good enough acquaintances to share rooms. They might have even preferred it; I think Draco and I had much more fun sharing everything during that holiday than we would have done if we had kept things separate.”

“That is the sort of thing that only people who have never had to share stuff before could say,” Weasley remarked. “But yeah, alright. So should we pretend that we are mates on holiday, and see if the house tries any more funny business on us?”

Pansy nodded. “I think that would be a good idea.”

Weasley sighed. “Fine. I don’t like it, but fine.” He stood up and straightened his robes. “Shall we crack on?”

~*~

_Magical Houses, Estates, and Heritage Sites - Incident Report_

__

_Date: 31/5/1985 - 1/6/1985_

_Location: Harrison Estate, Cirencester, Gloucestershire_

_Involved Parties: Peter Blackburn, Deborah Blackburn, Robbie Blackburn_

_Incident Summary: Husband and wife Peter and Deborah were having a heated discussion in the kitchen when they heard Robbie, their 2-year-old son, shouting from his upstairs bedroom. Upon reaching the entrance to the bedroom, Peter and Deborah discovered that the door was locked. Attempts were made to unlock the door using magical (Alohamora and similar charms) and Muggle (lockpicking) methods, to no success. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement was contacted, and their attempts proved equally unsuccessful. Robbie remained trapped in his bedroom for 36 hours, during which Peter and Deborah continued to argue, now about whose fault it was that they could not reach their son. Eventually the parents apologised, made up, and declared that they had to work together to solve the problem. But when they went back to Robbie’s room, they discovered that the door had unlocked itself. Little Robbie was tired and hungry, but otherwise unharmed._

\--

_Magical Houses, Estates, and Heritage Sites - Incident Report_

_Date: 5/11/1988_

_Location: Harrison Estate, Cirencester, Gloucestershire_

_Involved Parties: Jason Stockwell, Melanie Stockwell_

_Incident Summary: Jason and Melanie had moved into Harrison Estate some four weeks prior. Jason, a member of the Wizengamot, had been working long hours, often not getting home until long after Melanie had fallen asleep. On 5/11 Jason entered the main bathroom while Melanie was brushing her teeth, and used the mirror to fix his tie. He tried to leave, but the bathroom door had locked itself. Jason and Melanie cast all the spells they knew to try and unlock the door, but none proved successful. As they tried to regroup, Jason apologised and told Melanie she looked beautiful. Melanie thanked him and kissed him. Both Jason and Melanie declined to discuss what else happened, but after about fifteen minutes, the bathroom door unlocked itself._

\--

_Magical Houses, Estates, and Heritage Sites - Incident Report_

_Date: 17/8/1990 - 19/8/1990_

_Location: Harrison Estate, Cirencester, Gloucestershire_

_Involved Parties: Doris Crawford, Gertrude Williams, various friends and acquaintances_

_Incident Summary: Doris and Gertrude were old friends from long ago, but had not seen each other in decades. They were invited to a housewarming party at Harrison Estate, thrown by the new owner; a mutual acquaintance of theirs. The two women studiously ignored each other until Doris went down to the basement larder for a snack. Gertrude arrived a couple of minutes later to fetch some drinks. When Doris tried to leave, the larder door was locked. Despite Doris and Gertrude both being formidable witches, neither of them could unlock the door. The other housewarming guests also tried everything, from setting fire to the door to shooting Exploding Hexes at it, but nothing worked. The two women stayed in there for two days, saying very little to each other. Eventually the two women started talking. After arguing for about ten minutes over the events that led to their falling out, they started discussing the adventures they had been on when they were younger. As both women started laughing, the larder door swung upon. The women exited with their arms linked._

\--

_Magical Houses, Estates, and Heritage Sites - Incident Report_

_Date: 14/3/1993_

_Location: Harrison Estate, Cirencester, Gloucestershire_

_Involved Parties: Andrew Powell, Sarah Collins, Josie Harris, Simon Montague, Moeko Ishikawa, Billy Carter_

_Incident Summary: Andrew Powell had moved into Harrison estate with his parents and younger sister several months ago. He decided to have a small get-together, and he invited Sarah, Josie, Simon, Moeko, and Billy; school friends from his Hogwarts days. The party of six were in Andrew’s bedroom, drinking Butterbeer, when Josie stood up to get some more. She discovered that the door was locked. All six of them tried to unlock the door, to no avail. Andrew’s parents would be returning home in a few hours, so the party decided to wait until then. Simon suggested that they kill the time with a round of Spin the Bottle. Just before Andrew’s parents arrived, the party of six managed to play a full round, with each of them kissing every other party member at least once. When the last pair (Sarah and Josie) had shared what Billy dubbed the ‘hottest’ kiss that evening, Moeko heard an audible click come from the door. The door had unlocked itself._

~*~

Ron could not claim to be much of a cook, but he had a couple of easy recipes in his repertoire. Once Parkinson had declared the day’s work over, he retreated to the kitchen to assemble a pasta bake. As he put the bake in the oven and started chopping garden vegetables, it occurred to him that he had made far too much for one person, even if that one person was somebody who had once eaten 20 pumpkin pasties in one sitting (an achievement he considered one of his finest to date).

Ron noticed movement to his left, and looked up to see Parkinson enter. She had swapped her work robes for a fluffy dressing gown, and her hair was tied back in a high ponytail. If Ron had been asked to describe her appearance at that moment, the best word he could have come up with was ‘basic’, but in a good way. She was missing the aloof expression and superior air that Ron normally associated with her.

“Hey, Parkinson?” he said.

“Mmm?” she was settling into that same chair at the head of the table.

“I’ve made a bit too much dinner. Want some?”

She looked up, seemingly curious. “What have you made?”

“Pasta bake.”

“What is that?”

“You’ve never eaten pasta bake before?” 

Parkinson shook her head. Ron supposed he should not have been surprised. Parkinson came from a world of filet mignon, roasted pork belly and creme brulee. There probably was not much room for pasta bake, beef stew and shepherd’s pie there.

“You throw pasta in a baking dish, cover it with tomato sauce, top it with cheese, and shove it in the oven until it crisps up,” he explained.

Parkinson considered it. “That sounds… nice, actually.”

“There’s no need to sound so surprised.” Ron ducked down to pull the pasta bake out of the oven. It looked pretty damn perfect, if he did say so himself. The corners had turned a little brown, but most of the cheese was still at the deliciously melted stage. He levitated the pasta bake over to the table, along with a tossed salad, plates, and cutlery.

Parkinson watched with what Ron had to assume was fascination as he divided the pasta bake into four even portions, then used a spatula to lift out one portion for each of them. He handed her a half-full plate, and asked if she needed any help serving herself some salad.

“Oh shut up, even I’m not that Pureblood,” she said, picking up the salad tongs.

“I’m Pureblood too, you know.”

Parkinson rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. Most of us wouldn’t come within ten feet of food like this.” She placed a small amount on her fork and took an experimental bite. For some reason, Ron felt a little nervous as he watched her chew. Since when did he care what Pansy Parkinson thought of his cooking?

She swallowed, and looked contemplatively down at her plate. “It’s a shame, to be honest. I think I like food like this more. It’s… friendlier.”

“‘Friendlier’?” As pleased as he was that she wasn’t gagging or otherwise trying to regurgitate what she had just eaten, he thought the description of ‘friendly’ was a bit of a stretch.

But Parkinson seemed determined to stand her ground. “Yes, friendlier. More homely. More… more like this house,” she said, indicating the room around them, “than, say, Malfoy Manor.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Ron said, looking at the lemon yellow walls, pale pink tiles, and blue/grey shelving surrounding them. “I don’t think a colour scheme like this would work in a house like that.”

“Definitely not,” Parkinson agreed. “I think if Narcissa tried to paint a room in Malfoy Manor light yellow, the room would self-destruct, regardless of whether she was in it or not. Although, that would create mess, which the manor also abhors.”

Ron snorted and took a bite of his own dinner. He was right; it was delicious. 

“So,” he said, after a couple of moments’ silence (apart from the sound of chewing), “why did you become a… I don’t even know what you technically are. Magic House Whisperer?”

“That is probably as accurate a title as any,” Parkinson answered, taking a sip of water and clearing her throat. “I grew up surrounded by magical houses. I was raised in my family’s manor, I spent a lot of time in Draco’s manor, and I used to visit acquaintances of my father, who all also lived in old houses that had housed magical folk for generations. When I was about six or seven, I realised that all those houses I had visited were different to each other. They were all decorated differently and had different layouts, of course, but what caught my attention more was how the atmosphere within them changed, depending on what I was doing.”

“What do you mean by ‘the atmosphere’?” Ron asked.

“It’s like,” Parkinson said, looking down at her dinner as though it would tell her the words she was looking for, “well, it’s like the bedrooms here. When we tried to sleep in different bedrooms, and they got all cold and hard and everything, despite looking pretty and luxurious, how did that feel to you?”

“Er… cold?”

Parkinson rolled her eyes. To be fair, Ron probably deserved that. 

“Sorry. Um, I guess, unhappy? Annoyed, even?”

“Exactly, that’s the sort of thing.” Parkinson took another sip of water. “But that completely changed when we were in the same bedroom. It was not just warm; it was welcoming. It was as welcoming as the room’s decor implied, wasn’t it?”

Ron nodded. “Yeah. So, does that happen in other magical houses?”

Parkinson nodded. “Most houses are not so obvious, but they do different things. Malfoy Manor makes noises.”

“Noises?”

“Yes. I remember Narcissa telling me once about when she was trying to re-organise her bookshelves. As soon as she started, she noticed this low, sort of breathy, grumbly noise, that seemed to be coming from nowhere.”

“What sort of noise?”

Parkinson let out a series of huffs and tuts. She sounded annoyed.

“So what did Mrs Malfoy do?”

“Nothing at first. But as she went on, the room started getting cold and dark, even though the curtains were drawn back and it was the middle of summer. Narcissa knows a fair amount about magical houses, and she guessed that the manor was not happy about her new organisation idea. She put all the books back where they were before, and the noise stopped.”

Ron had chosen to shovel another forkful of food in his mouth about two seconds before Parkinson had stopped speaking. There was an awkward silence while he chewed and swallowed as quickly as he could.

“Blimey,” he eventually said. “So how come this house doesn’t make noises?”

“It makes them sometimes, according to the case file,” Parkinson answered. “But it’s like I said; different houses do different things. They are a lot like people in that way. It’s like how I tend to yell when I’m angry, while somebody like Draco paces or gestures. Whereas when we’re both at Quidditch matches, he likes to shout at the players when they fuck up, while I sit there with my fists clenched.”

Ron nodded. “That makes sense. But that doesn’t answer my first question. Why did you start doing this job?”

“Oh, yes. Well, when I visited other houses, I used to like working out what the houses did and didn’t like,” Parkinson explained. “I would give my father’s friends advice when they told us their houses were doing something weird. It was fun, and I got pretty good at it. 

“After the Battle of Hogwarts and my father’s trial and everything, I knew I’d have to get a job. Narcissa told me to think about what I could do that nobody else could. I was drinking tea in her parlour, and I almost put the teapot directly on the table, which Malfoy Manor hates. If I had put the teapot on the table anyway, the room would have got cold and dark, to the extent where nobody would want to be in it. But I know what Malfoy Manor likes and does not like, so I put the the teapot in the ‘correct’ place, and the room remained warm and bright. It occurred to me that not many people would know how to keep magical houses happy, and I thought, would other people find my knowledge of houses useful? And your dad’s department did.”

Ron nodded. “It’s pretty amazing, what you can do. I mean, I know magical houses can think for themselves sometimes, but I would never have thought that what we do in them can annoy them, or please them, or whatever. And if what you say about this house is true; that it is trying to make friendships between people and all of that? I mean, who would think that a house could be smart enough to do that?”

Parkinson nodded, a grin spreading across her face. Ron had never seen Parkinson grin so widely before. It was a cliche, he knew, but it really did light up her face. He was not about to be a dick and tell her that she should smile more, but it would definitely suit her if she did. 

“It sounds like you’re getting it, Weaselbee,” she said. “Maybe your dad’s right. Maybe you’re not completely dense after all.”

Ron sighed. “I also stand by what I said yesterday. It’s wicked that this house can make people become friends, but it’s dreaming if it thinks it can make the two of us friends.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Parkinson said idly, poking at her last piece of pasta with her fork. “We have only been here for, what, three days, and I already think I dislike you slightly less than I did. Who knows? Maybe the house is onto something.”

Ron did not choke on his food, but it was a near thing. Was she for real? Was she not saying, just yesterday, that the two of them were ‘obviously’ not going to actually become friends? He certainly had every intention of continuing to dislike Pansy Parkinson for the rest of his days.

Although, having said that, this dinner had been remarkably pleasant.

“Huh,” Parkinson said suddenly. “Do you feel that?”

“Feel what?”

“The chairs.” She sat up a little straighter, the better to ensure her back was against the back of the chair. “Ooh, yes. It feels like the chair is giving me a massage. Is yours?”

Ron mimicked her previous actions, settling his back against the seat. Sure enough, it felt like warm little pads were kneading just below his shoulder blades.

“Hey yeah! How cool is that?”

“Very cool,” she agreed. Ron noticed that her eyes were fluttering closed. “Ohh, this is heavenly. Just what the Healer ordered.”

As Ron continued to watch her, she let out a sigh of contentment, followed by a slow, steady ‘Mmmm…’ as the random chair massagers evidently hit a tender spot.

He smiled. He supposed he would have to stand up and clear away the plates soon, but he figured it would not hurt to give her another couple of minutes.

~*~

Thursday (3 Days Until Christmas)

Pansy was not normally the sort to treat herself. It was how she had been raised; her father believed that treats and gifts should only be given when they were earned. It had been a source of great annoyance for her as a child, when she saw her classmates being sent care packages full of toys and sweets, while she had to wait until her birthday or Christmas. In retrospect, however, she appreciated her father’s comparatively strict hand. It had taught her the importance of self-discipline, as well as how to appreciate treats all the more when she did receive them.

That morning, however, she was in a good enough mood to throw caution to the wind at the sound of her usual morning alarm, and allow herself an extra half an hours’ lie-in. She could not remember the last time she had done it, and it felt almost as delightful as last night’s chair massage. 

When she woke up properly, she noticed that the bedroom was lacking any discernible trace of Weasley. She assumed he was downstairs making his own breakfast, or perhaps he was in the back garden, harvesting the 50 or so beets he would need to produce enough sugar for his morning coffee. She had never known anybody to take that much sugar in a hot drink. She wondered if Weasley even counted teaspoons, or if he just kept adding sugar until he either got bored or his coffee had turned into syrup.

Pansy shook herself. She had more important things to do than muse over Weasley’s unhealthy habits. She swung out of bed and strode over to the bathroom, one hand undoing the tie in her hair as she opened the door.

“Hey!”

“Oh, crap!”

The bathroom was set up so that the combination bath/shower was directly opposite the door. Pansy had thought nothing of it, but now she had little choice but to think something about it. Because, standing in that bath, right in front of her, was Weasley; stark, bollock naked and in the process of applying soap to his person.

“Parkinson!” Weasley all but screeched, dropping the soap and attempting to hide his not-entirely-flaccid manhood with his hands. “What the fuck-fresh hell?!”

“I’m sorry!” Pansy gasped, every sensible part of her conscience giving way to surprise. “I didn’t know you were in here!”

“You didn’t know I was in here?!” Weasley repeated incredulously. “Couldn’t you hear the shower? Or see the light under the door? Or, I don’t know, knock?”

“No! I swear! I didn’t see anything! Or hear anything! Why would I have walked in here if I had--”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! Get out!”

“Right! Yes!” Pansy’s legs managed to recall how moving worked, and she flew out of that bathroom so quickly that she might have broken the sound barrier.

As soon as she had slammed the door closed, she leaned against it and sunk to the ground. That, she thought, had been truly mortifying. Now the sight of Weasley’s wet, pale, freckled body was forever burned into her retinas, unlikely to succumb to even the most strongly-cast Memory Charm.

Although, if she were held at wandpoint and asked to tell the honest truth, she would have to admit that Weasley’s nude form was nowhere near as horrific a sight as she might have thought. The man was surprisingly toned underneath those Auror robes and bright orange pyjamas she had been seeing him in this week.

She brushed her hair out of her face with still-shaking hands. How on earth had she not heard the shower? She could hear it perfectly well now. It wouldn’t surprise her if the house had deliberately soundproofed the bathroom, so Pansy would think it was empty and walk in on Weasley showering.

Pansy groaned. Of course that was what it was. 

“You are a complete git,” she growled at the ceiling, before standing up and storming out. She might have imagined it, but she was fairly certain she could hear a low, rumbling noise, not dissimilar to a laugh, sounding around her as she proceeded to the kitchen.

~*~

Ron came into the kitchen half an hour later, determined to put the morning’s incident behind him like the responsible adult he was told he sometimes could be. After all, it was not like that was the first time someone had walked in on him in his birthday suit. Growing up in a house with eight other people pretty much guaranteed a misstep or two.

He took his normal seat next to Parkinson, who had her nose buried deep in the case file yet again. She seemed to have gotten over her previously flustered state, as evidenced by her calmly passing him the coffee pot, toast plate and sugar bowl. He prepared his breakfast, taking care to make as little noise as possible. Ron did not know Parkinson at all well enough to be able to tell what she was thinking, but his best guess was that she was either concentrating hard on what she was reading, or she was still processing things and did not trust herself to speak just yet. Either way, he figured it would be best to wait for her to start a conversation.

“This house is a proper dickhead,” she eventually said, when Ron was nearly finished with his toast.

Ron swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “I mean, I don’t disagree, but what’s making you say that?”

“It played a practical joke on us.” Parkinson slid the file over to him, pointing at a particular incident report. “One of the non-Harrison owners handed back the keys because she was sick of having family members walk in on her in the bathroom. She swore it happened about twenty times.”

“Huh.” Ron finished his final bite of breakfast and washed it down with the last of his coffee. “Do people just not knock on doors anymore?”

The look Parkinson gave him was withering, to say the least. He thought that a little bit unfair. She was the one who walked in on him, after all. 

“Even if they did knock,” Parkinson said, “she would not have heard it. The house kept putting Silencing Charms on the bathrooms. That’s what it did to our bathroom this morning.” She slid her finger further down the report. “Sometimes the house would Apparate this woman to a different bathroom when she was in the middle of showering or bathing or doing her business.”

Ron snorted. The idea of somebody being transported to another section of a house, mid-dump, was highly amusing. He wondered if the contents of the toilet bowl would move with the person who had just deposited them there, or if it was up to the next unfortunate user of the first bathroom to discover it. He considered mentioning his musings to Parkinson, but something told him that she would not be keen on hearing them.

“So what do we do?” he asked instead. 

“I am going to explore this practical joker aspect of the house more.” Parkinson stood up with her plates. “As for avoiding what happened this morning, I suggest we let each other know when we use the bathroom.”

Ron grinned at her. “Are you sure you’re not just saying that so you’ll know when you can walk in on me again?”

Parkinson let out an annoyed huff and stormed out of the room, but not before Ron saw a distinct tinge of pink on her cheeks. 

~*~

Pansy had not come across many practical joker houses in her career. The old Pureblood families; the families most likely to live in the same house for generations and embed their magic into that house, were not known for their senses of humour. 

She did, however, have some experience with practical jokers in the form of people. After all, she had been at Hogwarts at the same time as Weasley’s infamous twin brothers. If she had had occasion to invest in some of their products during their final few years at school, in an effort to bring some cheer into her housemates’ lives, well then, that was her business.

She walked into the larger of Harrison Estate’s two living rooms, her arms crossed and a thoughtful expression on her face. If her experience had taught her anything, it was that the most important thing in the work of a practical joker is opportunity. If an opportunity to pull a prank appears, then that prank must be pulled. Therefore, if Pansy wanted to encourage the house to pull pranks, she was going to have to provide it with ample opportunities.

Weasley entered the living room a couple of minutes after she did. He was carrying one of those flashy, noise-making Muggle devices she had seen the teenagers in her neighbourhood use on occasion.

“Does that thing work here?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” Weasley replied, sitting on one end of a large sofa and pressing a button on the device’s side. “You don’t mind if I play games, do you? I’ll stop if you need me to be all Auror-y around you, or whatever. You just haven’t seemed to need my help much yet.”

“It’s fine. Just keep the sound down.” She could hardly blame him for being bored. So far the house had done plenty of cheeky things, but nothing that had put either of them in danger. Pansy was starting to liken the house to a particularly large dog: a largely friendly beast that might not know its own strength.

“Hmm.” Weasley’s pleased hum caused her to look over at him again. “It’s working fine. That’s good, hey?”

“Good, and unusual,” Pansy answered. “Normally magical houses are too, well, magical, for those sorts of gizmos.”

“Maybe there isn’t as much magic in this house?”

“With all the Apparating and temperature controlling and chair weaponising that’s been happening? No way. This place is swimming in magic.” Pansy cupped her chin in her left hand as she contemplated the situation. “Of course, most magical houses derived their personalities from magical folk who disliked Muggles and all they stood for. It’s possible that the Harrisons were more accepting of Muggles and Muggle things, and that trait was passed onto the house.”

Weasley appeared suitably surprised to hear that. “Blimey. So these houses have, what, prejudices and that, as well as everything else?”

Pansy nodded. “They are remarkable feats of magic, aren’t they?”

“I admit,” Weasley replied, his eyes wandering around the room, “they are starting to grow on me.”

If he had not chosen that moment to look back down at his game gadget thing, he might have noticed Pansy’s smile.

“Actually,” she said, after a couple of moments’ silence, “can I ask you something? It concerns your twin brothers, which I realise might be a difficult topic…”

Weasley waved her concern away with one hand, while pressing a button on his gadget with the other. “No. no, it’s fine. But thanks for asking.”

“No problem. So my question is, what were some of the most notable pranks they pulled on you?”

Whatever Weasley had been expecting her to ask, it clearly was not that, judging from his suddenly bewildered expression. 

“Why do you want to know?” he finally asked. Pansy did not miss the hint of defensiveness in his tone.

“I want to try and get the house to pull more pranks on us, and I need other examples to work from.” Pansy grinned at Weasley then. “You can tell me about things you saw your brothers doing to other people, if talking about what they did to you is too embarrassing or traumatic.”

“Thanks for your consideration,” Weasley responded, voice now laced with sarcasm. Pansy’s grin widened. If she had known how much fun it could be to get under Weasley’s skin, she would have done it far more often at school.

“They used to like tampering with foods and drinks,” he said. “I remember one time when Dad was drinking a Butterbeer, and they put something in it when his head was turned that made his nose grow. It had grown past the length of the table by the time Mum came in.”

Pansy snickered. “I can’t imagine your mother was thrilled.”

“Er, no. I think the twins were grounded for a month.” The corners of Weasley’s mouth turned up into a crooked smile at the memory. 

“What else?” Pansy asked, feeling around for her notebook and self-inking quill.

“Let me think…” Weasley sat back, scrubbing at the back of his neck. “Neglected drinks were always dangerous. I had a glass of pumpkin juice that I forgot about once. I got back to it and discovered they’d laced it with chilli. It hurt like hell, but tasted alright, thinking back on it. Oh, they also liked to transfigure things. Ginny’s toy broomstick got turned into a saltwater eel once. She found it really funny, but Mum nearly had a conniption, she was so mad. And once I opened my wardrobe to find that all my Cannons gear had been turned into the Tornadoes versions.”

“Truly the most horrible thing they could have done to you,” Pansy said, smirking. “They were doing you a genuine favour there, you realise?”

“No they weren’t, and also, fuck you.” Weasley suddenly grinned. “Actually, that reminds me of one of the best pranks they ever did. The morning my brother Percy went for his first job interview, he was putting on his best dress robes, but as soon as the robes touched his skin, they started turning into one of those really traditional, pouffy, Muggle ball gowns.”

Pansy let out a shout of laughter. “Seriously? Those ones with all the petticoats and that?”

“Yeah, one of them. It was the most incredible magic. They must have snuck into Percy’s dorm at Hogwarts and charmed the robes in advance, since they weren’t seventeen yet. I still don’t know how they made it so the robes only changed when he put them on. The gown changed back into his robes after fifteen minutes, but that was more than enough time for Percy to storm out of his room and all around the house, trying to find Fred and George so he could yell at them, while they were each hiding in a different cupboard, taking pictures. I still have a couple, actually.”

“I’d love to see them,” Pansy remarked.

“Well, come over to mine sometime, and I’ll show you.”

They both froze. Weasley’s casual yet sincere invitation, and all the implications of genuine friendship that came with it, hung in the air like a bad smell. Pansy stared at him, and he was only able to look back for a second before fumbling for his game box thing.

Pansy cleared her throat. “Um, okay. Well, I think that’s enough information for me to be getting on with. I’m… going to make a cup of tea. Want one?”

“Yeah, alright,” Weasley replied, looking resolutely at his gadget’s screen.

“Okay.” Pansy turned and walked out of the room. It took all of her self-control not to break into a run.

When she reached the kitchen, she pressed her hands flat on the kitchen counter and took a deep breath. She was probably over-reacting; something she had a tendency to do when she was flustered. Weasley had, no doubt, just had a slip of the tongue. It was laughable to think that he actually wanted her to go to his house. He must just be used to offering to show people those photos whenever he told that story.

And yet, when he realised what he had done, he had not immediately taken the offer back.

Pansy shook herself, trying to get the thought out of her head. Now was not the time for contemplating her forced closeness with her unexpected roommate. She had tea to brew, and not just because she fancied a cuppa.

\--

She brought a fully loaded tea tray back to the living room fifteen minutes later. To her relief, Weasley appeared completely absorbed in his game. He did not look up when she came in. 

She busied herself with preparing two standard cups of tea. She added about four teaspoons of sugar into his, then poured a little milk into both of them. She placed one on the table next to Weasley, then sat down in the armchair she had chosen for herself and took a sip of her own. The tea was strong and hot; just the way she liked it.

“Weasley?” she said.

“Mmm?”

“I’m going to leave the room for a moment. Don’t stop doing what you’re doing.”

If Weasley was confused, he did not show it. “Okay.”

“Thank you.” She left the room, went upstairs to the bedroom, grabbed the paperback she was currently reading, checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror, and came downstairs again. 

Everything was right where she left it. She sat down, picked up her teacup and had a sip. 

“Bleugh,” she said aloud, causing Weasley to look up. “Stone cold.”

“What?” Weasley asked. “But you’ve only just poured it.” He picked up his own cup and had a sip. “Mmm. Mine’s perfect.”

“Mine was,” Pansy clarified. “Now it’s like ice.” She contemplated the almost full cup for a moment, before suddenly yelling “FUCK YOU!” and flinging it across the room. 

“Fuck’s sake!” Weasley exclaimed, jumping in his seat as the offending teacup shattered. “Calm down, Parkinson! It’s just tea.”

“I fucking hate cold tea,” Pansy said, making her voice as sulky as she could. She tried to sit back down, but immediately leapt up again, her hands clasping her buttocks.

“You’re going to do my head in,” Weasley said, now clutching his chest. “What’s wrong now?”

“This chair,” Pansy explained. “It just stabbed me.”

“What, like they did to me on Tuesday?” With one hand still over his heart, Weasley glanced over at Pansy’s chair. The chair showed no hint of a loose spring or other sharp protrusion. “But you sat on it before without any problem.”

“Exactly,” Pansy said. 

“Huh?”

“The house is pissed at me,” she explained, pointing her wand at the shattered cup fragments, which started piecing themselves back together. “That tea had been deliberately cooled down. I think the house was playing a practical joke.”

“Oh… oh!” Weasley was now grinning. “I get it. You left the tea there to see if the house would do something with it.”

Pansy nodded. “But then I reacted badly to the joke--”

“And you got chair-stabbed as punishment!” Weasley looked around the room with new-found admiration in his eyes. “Wicked.”

“Indeed. But now I need to work out what the house wants me to do instead.”

\--

An hour later, Pansy took her work to the entrance hall, where she had noticed an empty hat stand when she had first arrived. Hat stands were one of those household items that frequently had charms put on them, depending on what their past owners had wanted them to do. As such, they tended to be particularly useful when it came to discovering a house’s quirks. 

Pansy brought hers and Weasley’s coats, hats, and scarves down from the bedroom. She hung them up as carefully as she could, ensuring that all of the items were in direct contact with part of the hat stand. Once she had finished, Pansy went back to the living room and worked on some other theories for a couple of hours. Just before breaking for lunch, she went back to check on the hat stand.

She was not sure what she was seeing at first. Gone were the sensible coats and woollen scarves. In their place was a red, sequined jacket, a black top hat, a pink, feathered boa, a white, diamante-encrusted bra, and a pristine, shiny, black cane. 

Picking up the bra, Pansy found herself chuckling as she imagined presenting this to the more uptight members of the Pureblood aristocracy. They would probably faint. It was just the sort of practical joke she could imagine somebody like George Weasley pulling on a crotchety old Ministry official. 

“Weasley!” she bellowed. “Come and look at this!”

Weasley skidded into the entrance hall.

“What… what in Merlin’s name has the house done to my coat!?” He rushed over and pulled the sequined jacket off the hook. “That was my favourite!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Pansy said, laughing at his aghast expression. “I think it might suit you. It will take most of the attention away from your face, at least.”

“You’re such a bellend… what are you doing?”

Pansy was hooking the clasp of the bra around her middle. She swivelled the band around and threaded her arms through the straps. “I’m trying this thing on, stupid.”

“Why?”

“They’re clothes. What else would the house want us to do with them?” She wrapped the feather boa around her neck. “How do I look?”

Weasley considered her for a moment. “Ridiculous.”

“Why,” Pansy said, in an exaggerated Southern Belle accent, “that was exactly the look I was going for, Doll.” She sashayed her way to a nearby mirror, greatly exaggerating the swing of her hips as she moved. When she reached the mirror, she channelled the models in those magazines Draco used to smuggle into the Slytherin dormitory and pulled off some poses that were probably sexy when some people did them, but just looked silly on her. She laughed again. 

“I will say one thing,” came Weasley’s voice. He had donned the sequined jacket and top hat, and he looked just as silly as she had predicted. 

“What’s that?” she asked, trying to keep a straight face.

“I think this thing fits better than the coat did.” Weasley picked up the cane and jauntily made his way over to her. He bowed, with all the exaggerated hand twirls and flourishes that his outfit warranted, and extended his hand. 

“M’lady,” he said, touching his forehead to her knuckles. She giggled, almost feeling like a little girl playing dress-up.

A movement caught the corner of Pansy’s vision. She turned to see a sudden spark of magic coming from the hat stand. It weaved its way over to them, brushing through all of the charmed clothes and turning them back into their original items as it went. The bra turned back into her cardigan, and the boa back into her scarf. Looking over, she could see that Weasley’s clothes had done the same.

“Well,” Weasley said. “I think you’ve found out the right reaction.”

Pansy nodded in agreement. “It makes sense, really, that this house would want us to play along.”

They headed back over to the hat stand.

“Were there two sequined jackets before?” Weasley asked. “Because if so, the spell’s missed one.”

Pansy considered the single article of clothing now hanging there.

“There was definitely only one,” she said. She took down the jacket and inspected it. “Try it.”

Weasley shrugged it on. “It’s another perfect fit,” he remarked.

“Hmm.” Pansy counted the other items of clothing. Everything she had originally put on the hat stand was present and accounted for. “I think the house made you another jacket, Weaselbee.”

Weasley raised his eyebrows in surprise. “That’s, er, nice?”

“The house certainly thinks so.” Pansy started making her way to the stairs. “I can’t say I blame it. The red really does suit you.”

Weasley rolled his eyes, and Pansy laughed her way up the stairs.

\--

Pansy continued testing the house’s boundaries throughout the afternoon. By the time she declared the work day over, she had determined beyond much doubt that the house reacted best when she went along with its jokes. She managed to get it to repeat the cold-tea trick, only this time she reacted by reclining backwards and loudly declaring that she could use a cool-down. Not only did the house restore her tea back to its normal temperature, but it kept the tea hot until she finished it.

That, in itself, was a useful point, as well as the main reason why she so loved living in magical houses: if you learned how to treat the house right, it would reward you with thoughtful gestures.

When she had finished with her work, Pansy took the tea tray back to the kitchen. She then took the time to carefully hand-wash each piece of fine china before putting it back in its proper place. Once everything was clean, she made to leave the kitchen, only to come face to face with the thing she had been dreading since she read about this house’s quirks: a locked door.

“Shit,” she murmured, pulling out her wand. She tried Alohamora and several other, more complicated, unlocking charms, and none of them were even the slightest bit effective. She was not surprised, given this house’s history, but it was bad news all the same.

“Weasley!” she yelled desperately. “Help!”

“Parkinson?” Weasley’s disembodied voice came from, Pansy thought, upstairs. “Where are you?”

“In the kitchen!”

Pansy heard footsteps, then the rattling sound of a door handle being turned. She expected Weasley to discover that the door was locked and start uttering expletives, but, to her surprise, the door swung open easily. He stepped into the room, and the door started to close behind him.

“What’s going--”

“Weasley, no! The door!”

Weasley whipped around and grabbed for the handle, but it was too late. Pansy watched in horror as the door closed with a dull thud, less than a second before Weasley reached it.

“Shit,” she repeated, more loudly this time. She raced up to the door and tried to open it again, but it was not happening. They were trapped.

Weasley, to his credit, understood the situation straight away. 

“I’m sorry, Parkinson,” he said, trying, uselessly, to pull the door open as well. “I didn’t know the door was going to lock.”

Pansy shook her head. “It’s not your fault. The door was locked before you came in here. It must have unlocked itself just to let you in.”

“Okay,” he responded. “But why would it do this? It’s already locked us in. Why trap us in just this room? Could it be another joke?”

Pansy shook her head. “I don’t think so. This doesn’t seem funny enough for a joke. And none of the past instances of this house locking its doors seemed to involve pranking people.”

“I see.” Weasley furrowed his brow. “You told me the other day that this house locks its doors a lot. Have any other houses you’ve come across done the same?”

Pansy nodded. “A few.” She thought back through her past experiences. “There was one place that would lock the kids in their rooms if they had been misbehaving. There were also some really nasty old homes that would lock people they did not like in small or dark rooms by themselves, until they went nuts or starved to death.”

Weasley grimaced. “Way to lighten the mood.”

“Sorry,” Pansy apologised. “But I think if this house wanted us to starve, it would have chosen a room other than the kitchen.”

Weasley let out a huff of amusement. “Good point.”

Pansy took a seat at the dining table. “Let me think,” she murmured, more to herself than to Weasley. “Why has this place locked its doors in the past? And what happened before the doors unlocked again?” She considered the cases she had read about the day before. There was the case with the arguing parents of that boy in his bedroom, where the door unlocked after they stopped arguing. There were those two old friends in the larder who basically became friends again before the door unlocked itself. Then there was the husband and wife who probably shagged in the locked bathroom, not that they admitted that for the report. And, of course, there were those teenagers who played Spin the Bottle. It occurred to Pansy that this house was a bit of a perv. It certainly seemed to like trapping people in rooms until they’d snogged each other...

Her heart sank as the realisation dawned on her. The worst part was that she knew it was the answer as soon as she thought of it. It was just the sort of thing the house would want to see.

“You bastard,” she muttered.

“What?” 

Pansy looked up. Weasley was still standing near the door, looking at her with interest. “Are we doomed?”

Pansy tilted her head to the side. “That depends on your perspective. I know how to get us out of here.”

“Really? That’s brilliant!”

“We have to kiss.”

Weasley’s reaction changed from ecstatic to horrified so quickly that, in any other situation, it would have been comical.

“You must be joking,” he eventually said. 

Pansy rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t joke about something like this.”

“But… but… isn’t there another way?”

“There might be, but it could take me days to think of it, and there is a higher chance that it won’t work. Kissing, on the other hand, is something this house enjoys in droves.”

Weasley sighed. “Is it possible to arrest a house for being a peeping Tom?”

“You’re the Auror, you tell me.” Pansy took a step closer to Weasley, and he almost fell over backwards in his haste to get away from her. Pansy clucked her tongue impatiently.

“Come on, Weasley. With those bits of innuendo you’ve been dropping, I’d have thought you’d be a little less squeamish than this.”

“It’s different. I’m joking when I say that stuff.”

“Right, well, put up with this reality for a moment, then you can get right back to joking about it.”

Weasley pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, before straightening up and reluctantly edging closer to Pansy. “Fine.” 

He closed his eyes and pursed his lips. Pansy rolled her eyes again, but she knew better to complain. At least he was co-operating. She closed the space between them and lightly brushed his lips with hers.

An quiet clicking noise came from the door.

Weasley’s eyes flew open. He turned and rushed to the door so quickly that Pansy was amazed he didn’t accidentally slap her. When he tried to open the door, she could see that the handle was moving more than it had been. However, it was not turning all the way.

“OK,” she murmured. “So it’s half unlocked…”

“Well that’s no bloody good, is it?” Weasley groused.

“No, but it is telling.” Pansy examined the door handle herself, just to be sure. As she had suspected, the door was on its way to being unlocked, but was not there yet. “This means that we are heading in the right direction.”

“So… what? Do we have to kiss again?”

Pansy nodded. “And I think we need to do it for a bit longer, and make it a bit more… like we want to be doing it.”

Weasley visibly shuddered at that, and Pansy wondered if she ought to be offended. She did not think she was that terrible a specimen to kiss, when all was said and done.

“How long do you think we’ll have to do it?” he asked.

Pansy shrugged. “Until the house is satisfied. That’s the best answer I can give you.” She noted his continued obvious displeasure, and let out another sigh. “Look, I don’t like this either, but it has to be done. Maybe you should pretend I’m somebody you find really attractive? I’ll do the same.”

Weasley looked, if anything, more displeased. “That’s not the… alright, yeah. Fine. Let’s just do this.”

“You sure know how to make a girl feel special,” Pansy quipped, stepping closer to him again.

“Sorry for not bringing my best material--” Weasley started to say, before being cut off by Pansy’s lips pressing against his.

~*~

OK, Ron thought, as Parkinson’s hand brushed against his cheek. This could be worse.

It had been some time since he had last kissed someone, and he had forgotten what it felt like. Before he had kissed anyone, he had thought it looked a bit disgusting. It was basically an exercise in saliva exchange, after all. His opinion did not change much while he was with Lavender, probably because he’d been really, really quite rubbish at it. The person who changed his mind was Hermione, who was both surprisingly good at kissing (although there was a fair chance she had read every book there was on the subject ahead of time) and insistent that he practice his technique. It was then that he began to understand why people actually liked kissing each other. It was an intimate activity, capable of being both soft and nurturing, and fiery and passionate. It felt nice, Ron discovered, to share that intimacy, and that level of feeling, with another.

Plus, it often led to more interesting bedtime activities, which he had enjoyed immensely with Hermione while their relationship had lasted.

Since splitting up with her, he had had a couple of casual girlfriends. They had all been perfectly lovely people, but none of those relationships had lasted for longer than two months. The last of those had been about two and a half years ago, meaning that this moment, with Parkinson, was the most intimate he had been with a woman in 30 months.

He felt her tilt her head slightly, before her tongue started running along his lips in an attempt to gain access. He responded reluctantly, opening his mouth a fraction. She slipped her tongue inside and started brushing it against his. It felt...weird, because this was Parkinson, but if he did not think too much about that, it was actually kind of nice. For one thing, she smelled like vanilla, with a touch of honey-like sweetness. He had noticed a soap bar in the bathroom shaped like a bee. Maybe that was what he was smelling? It was nice, and combined with the more subtle, warm bread smell that he tended to associate with women, it was… very nice, actually.

Parkinson adjusted her position again, and he noticed a change in her breathing. It was a little louder, as if she needed to get more air in with each breath; and also a little quicker, almost like a pant. As he listened to her, and continued to feel her tongue caressing his mouth, and smelled more of her warm, sweet scent, he felt something that he had not felt in a long time, and would never, in a million years, have thought could be evoked in him by Pansy Parkinson: arousal. 

Suddenly, it did not matter that he was kissing somebody he had hated for years. All that mattered was that he was kissing her, and it was unexpectedly glorious, and it had been so long since anything like this had felt glorious to him, and he wanted more. Before he realised what he was doing, he was pushing Parkinson against the door that had started this trouble in the first place, sliding his arms around her waist, and deepening the kiss.

Parkinson gasped in response, her hands winding themselves in his hair and tugging gently on it. The sound that came out of him at that was neither proper nor dignified, but he was past the point of caring. He pressed her against him, eager to feel the warmth of her body against his, and for her to feel the growing effect she was having on him. He figured she must have felt it, because she let out a whimper that was both the most adorable and the most erotic thing he had ever heard. But he still wanted more.

The door made another, slightly louder, clicking noise, and Ron was brought back to reality with all the grace and subtlety of a rock slide. He extracted himself from Parkinson as quickly as he could, taking a giant step back in the process. Now far enough away from her to be able to think straight again, he looked over at her, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips were wet, and she was wearing an expression of astonishment and confusion that he could relate to on every conceivable level.

“Um,” Parkinson eventually said, clearing her throat. “I think the door just unlocked.”

“Er, right,” Ron replied, not trusting himself to say anything more.

Parkinson turned around, grabbed the door handle with both hands, and pushed. The door sprung open, and she took a step outside before turning back around.

“I’ll see you at dinner then?” she asked.

“Er, yeah,” Ron replied, scrubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “Dinner.”

She nodded, then turned back around and walked away.

Ron allowed himself a couple of deep breaths as he collected his thoughts. He did not need nearly as much time as he allowed himself, because there were only three thoughts that needed collecting. 1) he had just kissed Pansy Parkinson, 2) he had really, really liked it, and 3) that probably was not good.

~*~

Friday (2 Days Until Christmas)

When Pansy woke up on Friday morning, she wondered if she was legitimately capable of getting through the day without drowning in a sea of awkwardness.

\--

Dinner the night before had been dreadful. Weasley was as jumpy as a flea, jolting out of his chair at even the slightest noise or movement. She could hardly claim to be the epitome of calm herself, although she was far better at masking her anxiety. As much as she tried to tell herself to not think about it, to put it behind her, to remember that they had had to do it to get out of the kitchen and there was nothing more to it than that, she could not escape the fact that she and Ron Weasley had actually, properly kissed, and they had done it with more than a little enthusiasm. And now Pansy was sitting next to him, trying not to look at him, probably smelling all sorts of pheromones coming off him, and constantly switching between not wanting to even look at him and wanting to beg him to kiss her again.

Pansy knew there was no way she would be able to fall asleep with Weasley beside her, so she suggested they take advantage of the good mood the house was probably in after all of the day’s pranking, and try to sleep in separate bedrooms that night. Weasley agreed so quickly that she would not have been surprised if he had been considering suggesting the same thing. That was all they said to each other for the rest of the evening.

Her room had been slightly colder than she usually liked it, and the mattress reminded her a bit of the rickety beds in Azkaban about which her father often complained, but it was bearable. Pansy went to bed suspecting that it would take her forever to get to sleep, but she was out like a light in under ten minutes. 

\--

Now that she had woken up, she suspected that the experience of kissing somebody she had never before felt even the slightest amount of sexual attraction towards, had sent such a shock through her system that her body had to enter a state of unconsciousness in order to process it.

She showered, dressed, and proceeded to the kitchen. As she prepared her standard pot of coffee and bowl of cereal, she opened the case file to the incident reports involving food and beverages.

The kitchen door opened, and Pansy looked up to see Weasley standing there, looking nervous. His hair was still wet from the shower, and his Auror uniform had not been buttoned properly. She felt a wave of something - some sort of feeling that she either could not, or did not yet want to, identify - go through her, but she maintained her Pureblood poker face and offered Weasley a polite smile as he sat down. He nodded in response, and she passed him the toast, coffee, and sugar bowl, as usual.

“What are you going to be working on today?” Weasley asked her, after an agonising amount of silence.

Pansy leapt at the opportunity for conversation. “Well, you know how a lot of magical households are able to conjure up food and beverages?”

“They are?” Weasley’s expression of doubt was unexpected. “But food is one of the exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration.”

Pansy raised her eyebrows. “Impressive. Not many people remember that.”

“It’s a hard one to forget when Hermione Granger is your best mate.”

“Ah, of course.” Pansy had to admit a not-insignificant amount of respect for Hermione Granger. Arthur had had occasion to request her assistance in the past, and the woman knew her magical theory better than just about everybody. “Well, she’s right, of course. But you know how most of us connect our houses to one of the food apparition services?”

Weasley snorted. “‘Most of us’. You really don’t know how the other half live, do you? My mum still dreams about being able to use those services. They’re so expensive.”

“Really? But the one we used to get was really reasonable, considering what we were getting--”

“Parkinson,” Weasley interrupted, fixing her with a look of irritation so piercing that she quieted immediately. “Trust me. When you barely have enough money to feed a full household, those food apparition services can’t be more than a fantasy. Anyway, that’s not the point. I know about them. They apparate your meals straight into your kitchen, right?”

“When you request it, yes,” Pansy clarified, her face tinged pink at Weasley’s down-talking. Although, in retrospect, she definitely deserved it. “Well, some magical houses become able to use the services themselves, sometimes without the owners knowing about it. I once came across a house that had racked up over 1000 galleons’ worth of bills, because the house kept on requesting Honeydukes chocolate for one previous owner, long after he had died. We found the chocolate in one of the bathroom cupboards. He must have requested for a secret stash to be apparated directly there.”

“Blimey.” Weasley’s face was contemplative as he stirred his seventh teaspoon of sugar into his coffee. “Couldn’t they just close the accounts?”

“Of course, and they usually do. But some were created centuries ago; before these things were properly documented. The current owners might not know they exist.”

“Right. That makes sense. So are you going to try and get this place to conjure food and drinks?”

“Exactly. And who knows? The house might bring us a proper feast.”

~*~

The house conjured up nothing edible all day; a day that was probably one of the longest in Ron’s life.

To be fair, with the veritable whirlwind of shit that went down yesterday, it was all but guaranteed that today would seem dull by comparison.

Ron would not have minded a day that was merely boring. Ron could cope with boredom. Being an Auror tended to involve long intervals where absolutely nothing happened, in between brief moments of high intensity. As long as report-writing wasn’t involved, he and boredom were reasonably at peace with each other. 

But today was different. Not only was there something between ‘sweet’ and ‘fuck all’ for him to do, but he had to do that sweet fuck all whilst remaining in close proximity to Parkinson. She spent the day pacing the kitchen, trying random bits of magic, then sitting next to him and thinking for a few moments, before standing up and starting again. When she sat next to him, her sweet, vanilla honey smell infiltrated his nostrils and had him thinking things that were the most bizarre combination of quite pleasant and extremely unwelcome. When she was pacing, she had a tendency to twirl the end of her high ponytail between her fingers. Ron also noticed her biting her bottom lip on more than one occasion. He had no doubt that her behaviour was the same as it had been before today, but now that he was looking at her as somebody he had not only snogged, but had thoroughly enjoyed snogging, each of her little idiosyncrasies had become guaranteed ways to send brief but frequent flutters of confusing desire through him.

When it finally got to 6pm, Parkinson slid into her chair with a sigh of defeat that nicely masked his corresponding sigh of relief. He was fairly sure that if he had had to see her twirl that damn hair of hers one more time, he would have lost all control and done… he did not even want to think about what.

“So,” Parkinson said. “It looks like the Harrisons were not food service users, after all.”

“I guess not,” Ron agreed, tracing the pattern of the wooden table with his finger in an effort to avoid looking at her. “But at least now you know.”

“Maybe,” Parkinson said. “Of course, I might have missed something.”

“I doubt it. You seemed pretty thorough from where I’m sitting.”

“Mmm. I did everything I could think of. And I’m pretty sure I covered everything in this file as well.” Parkinson pulled the case file towards her and opened it to a bookmarked page. “Yes… tried that… and that… that seemed to already be there when that happened… oh.”

“‘Oh’?” Despite himself, Ron raised his head to look at Parkinson. She was considering the file with new attention.

“There was a poker night, about ten years ago,” she explained. “Five or six people came over, and they all brought snacks and such, while the owner supplied a small amount of booze. It was a weeknight, after all. I don’t think any of them would have made it to work the next day, though. They didn’t stop playing until about 3am, by which point they were all fall-down drunk and could not do anything but find themselves somewhere to sleep it off.”

“How could they have gotten that drunk if there was only a bit of booze?” Ron asked.

Parkinson nodded. “Exactly. The booze never ran out. The house must have been supplying it.”

“Huh. So if we ask for a couple of pints of mulled mead, or whatever, it’ll just appear?”

Parkinson gestured to the table in front of them. “No idea. Try it.”

“Er, OK. Um, oi! House! Can we have a bottle of mead?”

Ron glanced at Parkinson, who looked mildly exasperated. “Please,” he quickly added.

Nothing happened.

“Should I be more specific?” Ron asked.

“I don’t think so,” Parkinson said. “This might just be a hunch, but I don’t think the house would just dish out alcohol when asked. That doesn’t seem… fun enough.”

“Pfft. Shows what this house knows,” Ron said. “Drinking is almost always fun. Especially while playing Exploding Snap. I’ve had some great nights with my mates, a deck of cards, and a bottle of jolly juice.”

Parkinson did not respond at first. She seemed to be giving Ron’s words more consideration than he would have thought they warranted. Most unfortunately, she had started biting her lip again. Ron tried to ignore it, to absolutely no success.

“There is one thing that I would like to try,” she eventually said. “You can play chess, right?”

“I’d be a pretty poor excuse for a Weasley if I couldn’t,” Ron replied.

Parkinson smiled. “Excellent. Do you fancy a game?”

\--

Ron had not noticed it the other day, but the Harrison Estate library housed a particularly fine looking chess board, with two sets of players’ pieces that were almost more enthusiastic about playing for him than his old and faithful set at home.

“I warn you,” Parkinson said, taking a seat across from him. “I’m pretty good.”

Ron cocked an eyebrow, doing his best not to grin. This was more like the rivalry he was used to having with Pansy Parkinson, or indeed any Slytherin from his Hogwarts days. “Well, not to blow my own trumpet, but I did earn 50 points for Gryffindor in First Year for playing the best game of chess in Hogwarts’ history. I’m pretty sure you never managed that.”

“Admittedly, no. But then, Dumbledore never saw me play a game, did he?”

As they set up their respective sides of the board, Ron heard a noise coming from a cabinet by the window. Parkinson also heard it, and she shared a confused look with him before going to investigate. By the time Ron was done straightening up his pawns, Parkinson was practically skipping back, a suspiciously recognisable bottle in her hand and an expression of glee on her face.

“I knew it! Look what the cabinet gave us!”

She showed him the bottle, and, sure enough, it bore the trademark label of Odgen’s Old Firewhiskey.

“Wicked! So, the house basically gives people inside it booze when they are about to have some fun.”

“It looks that way.” Parkinson placed two glasses on the small table and poured two fingers of the amber liquid in each. “I like the house’s style, at any rate. Chess is always more fun with a drink or two.”

She raised her glass, and Ron clinked it with his own.

\--

It ended up being considerably more than a drink or two.

In the six hours it took for them to play three games, they downed the entire bottle. Ron happened to be a man who was reasonably good at handling his liquor, but he was feeling more than a little tipsy when he called ‘Checkmate’ on their tiebreaker.

He suspected that Parkinson was feeling similarly.

During the first game, wherein she downed four glasses, she kept on insisting that she could drink her old Slytherin housemates under the table. He did not give any indication that he doubted this, but she seemed to take his silence as a challenge. 

After she won the first game (and ‘win’ was an understatement; she completely slaughtered him), she poured herself a double and suggested he try to win back his pride with a second round. So they played again, and he did indeed win (though narrowly), while she provided an entertaining and increasingly loud commentary on the affair. 

When the second game was over, he did not even say anything before she was setting up the pieces again, her movements far more heavy-handed than usual. By then he was fairly buzzing from the Firewhiskey, and decided he would join her in her commentary. As they polished off the final dregs, shouting ‘and the Black Queen tackles Mr White Pawn with all the ferocity of a hungry panther!’ and ‘Mr Castle will be feeling that attack from Mrs Knight-Who-is-Having-a-Bad-Hair-Day tomorrow!’, Ron could not believe that he had ever felt hostility, or, worse, awkwardness, toward this highly entertaining person. Indeed, if he were sober enough to have feelings more complex than ‘happiness’, ‘sadness’ and ‘anger’, he might have been hit with a wave of remorse over not having befriended her sooner.

When he won the third game, in a stellar victory that had him running a celebratory lap around the library with his arms in the air, Parkinson clapped and presented him with the empty bottle as a trophy, seemingly forgetting that his winning meant she had lost.

“You are the champion!” she cried. “Now you shall be bestowed with declarations of undying love by all the fair maidens in this land!”

“Yes!” he agreed. “For while other men can ride horses and win wrestling matches, their skills are nothing compared to my ability to move shaped pieces of wood against a flat, checkered surface!”

“You will be the envy of all!” Parkinson declared, gesturing so dramatically that she lost her footing and stumbled.

“Careful,” Ron said, placing his hands on her shoulders before she could finish the fall. 

She straightened up, and they locked eyes for the first time that day. He had not had much chance to look so closely at her face before, and he noticed that she had a small smattering of freckles along the bridge of her nose. Granted, it was nothing compared to the landscape of freckles that covered most of his person, but they were something of an enchanting imperfection all the same.

“Wow,” she breathed.

“What?” he asked.

“Your eyes are bluer than I thought.”

That was not what he expected her to say. Not that he had known what she was going to say beforehand. “Er, thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome.” She glanced to her left, and he followed her eyes to the old clock that was hanging on the wall.

“Time for bed,” she remarked.

Ron nodded. “Do we have to sleep in the same bed tonight?”

“Yes,” Parkinson replied, slurring a little on the ‘s’. “I don’t think it will let us be apart two nights in a row.”

“Alright.”

They managed to make it to Parkinson’s bedroom, although they each tripped at least once along the way. They even managed to get changed into their pyjamas without incidence. Ron took a bit longer to finish his nighttime rituals. He climbed into the bed several minutes after Parkinson, and was just about to cast the charm to split the bed apart when she caught his arm.

“No,” she whispered.

“No?” Ron’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Do you think the house won’t like it?”

“The house won’t mind,” she said. “But… can we keep the bed together? For tonight?”

Somewhere in the back of his head, Ron could hear alarm bells ringing. This is not good, they seemed to say, sounding a lot like a younger version of himself. You need to distance yourself. She cannot be trusted. You must not get any closer to her.

But, said another part of his brain; a part that sounded a bit like Hermione. What if those alarm bells of yours are wrong?

“Alright,” he agreed.

“Thank you.”

Ron thought she would let go of his arm and scoot herself toward the edge of the bed, but instead she clung onto him tighter and rested her head against his shoulder. She was asleep within minutes.

Ron tried to adjust his position, and he caught the smallest hint of vanilla and honey with his next breath. A wave of something - pleasure, maybe? - went through him, and he felt his cock stir.

“That’s also probably not good,” he whispered to the ceiling.

\--

Saturday (1 Day Until Christmas)

Ron woke up on Saturday morning with a slight headache and a strong desire to not be awake yet.

But then he noticed a weight on his left arm. A weight that was more than enough to drive away any thoughts of sleep.

During the night, Parkinson had somehow managed to shuffle herself as close to him as possible. Her head was so close that he could count the individual freckles on the bridge of her nose. Her chin rested on his shoulder, and her quiet exhales tickled his cheek. Her arm was draped loosely across his chest; a weight that would be comforting in most other situations, but only added to his trouble now. The most troublesome thing of all, however, was that she had placed her right leg on top of his left thigh.

As soon as Ron had made a note of all of this, Parkinson sighed in her sleep and moved a fraction. As she did this, her leg moved further across his, as though she were slowly trying to climb on top of him. He felt a spot of extra warmth that he had not noticed previously, and when he looked down, he saw that she was brushing the apex between her thighs against him.

Before he knew it, all of the blood had rushed to his groin, and he could not keep back a moan of frustration. Parkinson must have heard him on some subconscious level, because she responded with a moan of her own. Only hers did not sound remotely frustrated.

Ron shook his head. _No_ , he thought. _This is too much_. Moving as carefully as he could, he managed to extract himself from Parkinson without waking her up. He slid off the bed and made a beeline for the bathroom. If his body was not going to behave, then he was going to have to deal with it as best he could.

~*~

Pansy woke up feeling cold. It was odd, considering the comfortable temperature of both the bed and the room. It was also the least of her worries. Her head was throbbing, and everything around her was far too noisy, which only made the throbbing worse. 

She sat up, looking around for a glass of water or something, and noticed a little bottle of Hangover Potion sitting on her bedside table.

“Thank you, House,” she murmured, uncorking the bottle and tipping its entire contents down her throat. The liquid magic travelled through her body as soon as she swallowed, sweeping away her headache with the finesse of a finely-made broom sweeping away a dust bunny. She sighed, placed the empty bottle back on the table, and settled back against the pillows as she thought about what experiments she ought to do today.

After a moment, she realised that the noises that had been causing her strife had not disappeared after consuming the potion, as she thought they would. They had, however, changed; what had sounded like a horrible mishmash of noises before had become the singular, constant sound of a running shower. Unlike yesterday morning, this shower sounded unnaturally loud. It was almost as if the shower head was right next to her ear. 

Well, she thought. At least I’m not going to walk in on Weasley today.

As soon as she thought about Weasley, she noticed another noise: low-pitched, staccato grunts. Pansy snorted. Weasley was a pretty tall bloke - perhaps the everyday process of washing his entire body was gruelling for him? He sounded like he was lifting weights in there. Either that, or he was masturbating.

Pansy’s eyes flew wide open as the realisation hit her. Now that she was thinking about it, there was no doubt in her mind that Weasley was jerking off in there. She groaned in irritation. Hadn’t she requested, just a few days ago, that he not do that while the two of them were in the same room? Couldn’t he control himself, for just a moment? It was just a little pathetic, not to mention disgusting.

Having said that, she now knew what he looked like naked, and she was not particularly adverse to what she had seen. He certainly had no reason to think himself inferior. And of course, she had a vague idea of what his naked body might feel like, having now intimitely felt some of the clothed version of it. She imagined what it might be like to have his naked body pressing against hers, kissing her like he had on Thursday, making noises like the ones he was making now…

“Oh, sweet Merlin,” she whispered. The pulsing, unmistakable heat of arousal went straight to her nether-regions, as though it had been prepped to do so. And perhaps it had been. She had felt cold, and strangely bereft of something. Maybe she had been more aware of Weasley’s presence that night.

As much as she tried to ignore it, all she could now think about was what was happening just a couple of feet away: Ron Weasley, nude to the insanely freckled skin, pulling on his not-insubstantial cock and enjoying it immensely (if the increasing volume of his grunts was any indication). The pulsing feeling between Pansy’s legs intensified, and it took everything she had to refrain from touching herself. Indeed, she was about two seconds away from not being able to resist the temptation any longer when Weasley let out a particularly loud groan, followed by silence. If there had ever been a more telltale aural sign that climax had been achieved, Pansy was yet to hear it.

She sighed, feeling muscles that she had not realised were tense suddenly relaxing. That was close. 

Although, there was no getting away from the fact that Weasley was still showering, and she was still aroused. She climbed out of the bed, pulled on her dressing gown, and headed downstairs under the hope that preparing breakfast might calm her down.

\--

Weasley joined her in the kitchen about half an hour later, looking far calmer than he had the day before. She almost wanted to laugh, or, possibly, cry, upon seeing the change in him. _Of course he looks more relaxed_ , she thought to herself. In a world where men, women and other adult persons were regularly hoping to get their jollies, his jollies had just been thoroughly gotten. Unlike hers.

It really did not help matters that his hair was damp from the shower again. 

“Hey. How’re you feeling?” Weasley asked, smiling at her with the easy air of somebody who had just jerked off in the shower and had no idea that the person he was talking to had heard it all.

Pansy called upon her Pureblood poker face. She had a sneaking suspicion she was going to be using it constantly, from now until such time when she worked out how to get them out of this house.

“I’m alright,“ she said. “Thanks to that hangover potion. Did the house give you one too?”

“The house?” One side of Weasley’s mouth turned upwards with amusement. “I guess it would make sense for this house to bring in hangover cures, but I left that for you.”

Pansy nearly choked on the mouthful of coffee she was imbibing. “You… you did?” she managed to splutter out.

Weasley raised an eyebrow. “Well, yeah. I always pack a small supply when I’m on away missions, just in case. Can’t be hungover on the job, and neither can you.” He nudged her gently with his elbow, and Pansy felt her face flush. She quickly brought her mug up to her mouth.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Don’t mention it.” Weasley grabbed the sugar bowl. “So what are you gonna work on today?”

“Hmm.” Pansy flipped through her file. “I think I have most of what I need to write my report, so I want to visit each of the rooms today, and check that the magic I’ve seen so far remains consistent.”

“Cool. Will you need me to do anything?”

“Yes. The matchmaking, friendship forming trait is this house’s main driving force. I want to confirm that good things happen when two people are being friendly to each other, and bad things happen when they are not.”

“Does that mean I can throw things at you?” Weasley asked, his mouth upturned in that lopsided smile again.

“You can,” Pansy answered, “but I cannot guarantee that your face will be devoid of magically-inflicted burns by the end of the day if you do.”

“Aww. You’re so much less fun when you’re sober,” Weasley said, folding his arms and putting on the most exaggerated pout in human history.

Pansy looked away. Weasley’s purposely puffed-out lips were distracting. “Ha ha. Come on, eat up. There are a lot of rooms for us to get through. Did you get enough sugar?”

Weasley glanced briefly at his coffee (which currently had about eleven teaspoons of sugar in it). “You laugh, but these syrup-coffees are what makes me as sweet as I am.”

Pansy opened her mouth to respond, but she could not think of any good retorts. She was not sure how she felt about this cheekier version of Weasley. It was immensely annoying that he seemed so chilled while she felt like she was teetering on the edge of all self-control. On the other hand, she had to admit that this Weasley was fun, and charming. 

And kind of sexy.

“I’m going for a shower. I’ll meet you in the living room in twenty,” she said, striding out of the room as quickly as she could. One thing was for sure: that shower was going to be as cold as she could make it.

~*~

Thursday had been eventful. Friday had been long and boring, with a couple of hours of drunken enjoyment mixed with sexual frustration in the end. Saturday, on the other hand, was fun.

Ron had definitely made the right choice when he decided to ‘relieve his tension’ that morning. The therapeutic properties of a good wank were never to be underestimated. In this case, it turned the idea of having to stay around Parkinson all day from horrifying and frustrating, to actually being preferable to spending the day with most other people. 

It helped that what they ended up doing was also enjoyable.

As Parkinson explained it to him, they were using the theories she already had about the house (namely, that it was a pervy practical joker who liked people to be friends with each other) to test the magic in each individual room. In the living room, this meant experimenting with relative seating positions (the cushions got progressively harder and more painful the further away from each other they got, and they got warm and bum-massaging when they sat together and he leaned on her shoulder), pretending to argue (Ron threw a cushion at Parkinson with all the pretend-anger he could muster, at which point the rug on which he was standing decided to slide out from underneath him), and Ron pretending to fall asleep on Parkinson’s lap (which caused the fireplace to start up without prompting). In the bathrooms, they tried leaving taps dripping (the water drops turned into different colours, leaving a veritable rainbow of water on the shower floor), steaming up the room and writing on the mirror (depending on the message, the house either kept the message on there for several hours, or re-fogged up the mirror so quickly that the start of the message had disappeared by the time the end had been written), and experimenting further with the sound-blocking feature (Parkinson seemed particularly reluctant to do that one, and Ron could not work out why). 

After lunch they went to the library and set up the chess board once more. Parkinson went to the same little cabinet and, sure enough, discovered freshly materialised bottles of booze. Only this time the booze in question was Butterbeer.

“Maybe it guessed we wouldn’t want to drink Firewhiskey so soon after last night?” Ron suggested.

“Either that, or it thinks one in the afternoon is a little early to get into the hard stuff,” Parkinson replied.

They played just the one game (which she won, bringing their combined tally to 2-2) before heading to the bedrooms. They tried pretending to sleep in different rooms, in the same room but with one or both of them on the floor, or in the bath, and the room turned cold with everything except the two of them being on the bed next to each other. Even in the three twin rooms that came with separate beds, the conditions became noticeably nicer when Parkinson magically joined the beds together.

“This place really likes people bonding via beds, doesn’t it?” Ron said. 

Parkinson did not reply. If Ron had been paying better attention, he might have seen her cheeks flush.

By the time Parkinson declared the day’s work complete to her satisfaction, Ron was exhausted. Leaping around and pretending to be fighting with, and then friendly with, somebody, and then repeating that process several dozen times, took its toll on one’s energy levels. As well as that, the lingering effects of the morning’s male self-care ritual had faded at some point that afternoon, and he was noticing Parkinson’s sweet smell and hair-twirling habits once again.

He changed into a simple t-shirt and tracksuit pants, and napped in the living room (the only room in the house that remained hospitable when he was the only person inside it) for a couple of hours before heading into the kitchen for dinner. As he sat himself at his usual spot on the table, Parkinson emerged from the larder with a basket in her hands.

“Check it out,” she said, extracting a bottle of champagne from the basket. “This definitely was not in there before. Maybe the house thinks we’re celebrating?”

“Hmm.” Ron counted the days on his fingers, raising his eyebrows in surprise when he realised what day it was. “It’s Christmas Eve.”

“Champagne on Christmas Eve?” Parkinson inspected the bottle, as though hoping it would give her answers. “It’s not what we would have done in my household, but to each their own, I guess.”

She placed the bottle on the table between them, along with a punnet of strawberries.

“I brought these when I first got here, and I thought they looked particularly ripe today.”

“Champagne and strawberries.” Ron shook his head. “It’s almost cliche, isn’t it?”

Parkinson huffed in amusement. “I suppose so.” She went back to the kitchen and started pulling other things from her basket. “I thought I’d make dinner tonight, since you let me have some of yours a few nights ago. You seem kind of knackered.”

Ron’s eyebrows shot up again, although he realised he should not be surprised by her shows of generosity by now. She had proven herself capable of kindness on multiple occasions.

“That’d be great. Thanks.”

“No problem.” She smiled at him before taking down pots and pans. “How does chicken stir fry sound?”

\--

“You’re right,” Ron said, an hour and a half later. “These are bloody nice strawberries.”

Parkinson smiled over the top of her champagne glass. “They are probably my favourite fruit. I always seem to want them more when they aren’t in season, for some reason. But yes, I thought those ones looked pretty good when I bought them, and I guess the house just worked its magic. Literally.”

Ron chuckled. “A nice little pre-Christmas treat, perhaps?”

Parkinson nodded, although Ron noticed a slight frown gracing her features.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine.” She straightened up and offered Ron another smile. “I’m just sorry that I haven’t been able to get that front door unlocked yet. It doesn’t matter much to me, but I’m sure you want to spend Christmas with your family.”

“Oh,” Ron waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I knew I might be working on this assignment during Christmas when I took it on. I thought it might be nice to spend a year by myself, for once. It can be a real drag being surrounded by so many people all the time.”

Parkinson snorted in amusement. “I can agree with you there. I’m not much of a people person. But still.” She swallowed the remaining drops in her glass. “I’m annoyed that I haven’t figured it out yet. Especially since I think I know this house pretty well now.”

Ron shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll get it.” He downed the rest of his champagne as well, and stood up. “Tell you what. Why don’t we take a look at the door right now? You have half a bottle of champagne and eight strawberries inside you. Maybe that’ll give you a flash of inspiration.”

Parkinson looked doubtful, and Ron could not say he blamed her. But she shrugged and stood up. “Yeah, why not? Let’s go.”

As they approached the door, Ron smelled something that had nothing to do with champagne, strawberries, or Parkinson’s damn honey vanilla scent. This perfume was sweet, but also kind of flowery. He could not place it.

Parkinson twisted the enormous doorknob and pushed, but the door remained resolutely where it was. Ron doubted she expected anything different, but she still looked disappointed.

Ron felt uneasy, seeing her sad like that. They had just had a really nice, fun day, after all. He was not sure what had gotten into her. Perhaps she was tired?

“Maybe we should try snogging again?” he joked. “It worked last time.”

“Heh,” Parkinson laughed half-heartedly, looking up at the door. “In all seriousness, though, that probably wouldn’t work. The kitchen door was smaller. A door like this would require something… bigger, to happen.”

“Bigger than snogging?” Ron asked, also looking at the door.

Parkinson nodded. “Yes. Bigger than snogging.”

Ron let out a huff of amusement and looked over at her, only to find that she was now also looking at him. Their eyes met, and despite the fact that his palms were suddenly very sweaty and his collar very tight, he could not look away. That sweet, flowery smell was stronger now, and Ron realised that it was jasmine.

After what felt like an uncomfortably long time, Parkinson looked away. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she cleared her throat and said “I mean, yes, something like that might be a possibility. But there’s no… there’s no way it actually is a possibility, if either party is unwilling. There’s always more than one way to get a house to co-operate, and I’m pretty good at my job. I should be able to find a… a different way… to get us out of here before too long.”

She said all of this very fast, and Ron struggled to keep up. “Erm, right.” he ended up saying.

“And even if I don’t find a way,” Parkinson continued, “the Ministry can always be contacted. So... so whatever happens, it’ll be alright.”

“...sure,” Ron said, nodding slowly.

Parkinson nodded back, right before glancing at her watch. “Ooh, it’s getting a bit late. I think I’m going to get ready for bed.”

Without waiting for a response from Ron, she raced up the stairs. 

Ron watched her leave, and he noticed that the jasmine smell seemed to disappear with her. 

He sighed, took a seat at the foot of the stairs, and placed his head in his hands. He thought about Parkinson upstairs, brushing her teeth or whatever else, and wondered if she had wanted him to follow her. 

Ron could not even try to deny it to himself anymore; he wanted to sleep with her. No pleasant morning wank was going to take that desire away. Unfortunately, he was rubbish at working out whether girls wanted to sleep with him, and he had no intention of being one of those dickheads who launched themselves at women regardless of whether they wanted him to or not. He prided himself on being the type of bloke who was happy to act, even when the signs were a little murky. ‘Near enough is good enough’ normally worked well for him. But dalliances with women were one of his exceptions to that rule. He liked to be absolutely sure.

He thought about how Parkinson’s attitude towards him had changed that week. She admitted herself that she did not dislike him as much as she had. When they’d kissed, and he had lost his mind a bit, all signs indicated that she had gotten just as lost as he had. There was also last night, when she had asked him to leave the bed unseparated before falling asleep half-wrapped around his arm. She was pretty drunk, but still, it seemed to indicate interest on her part.

He considered what Parkinson had done just now. The suggestion of sex (because what other meaning could there be for ‘something bigger than snogging’?) had been made (by her, although it was he who had brought up the idea of snogging in the first place), then she had gone into the official Ministry spiel about how nothing like that had to happen if either party was unwilling…

Hmm. He hadn’t realised it at the time, but her wording during that spiel had been curious. She had not said that it did not have to happen ‘because we are unwilling’ or ‘because I don’t want to do that’; the likes of which she had been saying with regard to anything involving him earlier in the week. She had said ‘if either party is unwilling’, which suggested that, perhaps, she was willing. Could she have changed her mind, as he had?

He could not get the way she had looked at him out of his head. Although her eyes did not leave his, it felt like she was looking at all of him. He had almost felt exposed. But it was a good kind of exposure, because everything about that look made it seem like she wanted to… explore him. And he would not have been surprised if he had been looking at her similarly.

Ron shook his head. Part of him thought he should let this go. If she is interested, she should make the first move.

Except… she had just told him she was going to bed. Was that the first move?

He could see himself sitting there for hours, going through the same thoughts over and over again. Except he was not that sort of person. He liked to take action. Even when the prospect of taking action was daunting. He was a Gryffindor, for Merlin’s sake. It was about time he acted like one.

“Fuck it,” he said to himself. He stood and strode up the stairs.

~*~

Pansy worked her toothbrush over her teeth with more aggression than was strictly necessary. She could not seem to help it. The day had been a slow, consistent torture for her. Weasley had been so charming and playful that part of her wanted to punch him in the face, while another part of her wanted to drag him to the nearest horizontal surface and demand that he take her then and there.

Her offer to cook dinner had been more for her sake than his. She needed to separate herself from him and try to calm down. His cheerful mood seemed to have dwindled a bit, and she had caught him casting her odd looks that tended to result in her nearly knocking something over. The smell of jasmine started hitting her nostrils during the champagne and strawberries course, and Pansy wanted to strangle this house, because of course it would taint the air with a powerful aphrodisiac. It’s like the damn place was on a mission.

But no. It would not be right to force Weasley into doing something he did not want to do. And she told him as much. It had been the correct thing to do. He needed to remember that certain protocols existed for a reason.

But that look in his eyes just then. That was why she had had to escape his presence, screw any of the normal subtleties demanded by ettiquette.

She rinsed her mouth out, splashing her face with cold water at the same time. She had to work out some other way to unlock that door, and she had to do it soon. If she didn’t, there was every chance that she would do something that she would ultimately regret.

As she straightened up, she saw Weasley’s reflection in the corner of the mirror. He was standing at the bedroom doorway, looking at her with a determined expression on his face. She swallowed, took a deep breath, and pasted on her most confident, self-assured look before turning around.

“I was starting to think you’d gotten lost,” she said. “Maybe this house needs a map?”

Weasley neither said nor did anything at first, making her wonder if she had said something wrong. But then he moved toward her, striding with purpose. She was just about to ask him what on earth he was doing when he crossed the bathroom threshold, pulled her to him and pressed his mouth against hers.

And oh, it was good. It was as good as the kiss on Thursday had been. In fact, it was possibly better, because it was intense, and needy, and a thrilling sort of confusing, right from the start. Her hands wound themselves around the back of his head as she returned the kiss with enthusiasm. He backed her against the sink, and she gasped in surprise when her arse hit the cold porcelain. He took the opportunity to work his tongue inside her mouth, and she let out a whimper as his tongue started sliding against hers.

“W-- hmm-- wait, hang on,” she said, breaking the kiss and pushing him back. “This… you don’t have to do this. I told you.”

“I know,” he said, his voice low and gravelly in a way that her nether regions definitely noticed. “Neither do you.”

He kissed her again, and her eyes fluttered closed. His arms snaked around her waist, and the feeling of him holding her felt a bizarre combination of safe and dangerous; something that should not have been possible from a linguistic standpoint, let alone a practical one.

Reluctantly, she pulled away once more. Weasley was not entirely happy about it, if the look on his face was any indication. But he took a deep breath and cocked an eyebrow at her.

“It’s just…” she said, her hand automatically reaching up to her hair. “It might not even work. We could go downstairs tomorrow, and find that the door is still locked--”

“Parkinson-- Pansy,” Weasley interrupted her softly. He reached out and placed his hand over the one that had started twirling her hair. “Do you really think we would be here, right now, if this was about the house?”

Pansy bit her lip. She felt oddly vulnerable, and not just because he was over a foot taller than her and standing so close. She was not the sort to normally be honest with people. That is not to say she did nothing but lie, but she had always been taught that keeping honest truths about oneself private was the best way to protect against heartache. But it felt wrong to be anything but completely honest with Weasley right now. Weasley was the most stereotypical example of the what-you-see-is-what-you-get type that she had ever met, but it felt like he was exposing more of himself than even he normally would.

And so, she told him the truth. “No.”

“Exactly.” Weasley’s other hand cupped her cheek. “I don’t care if this works or doesn’t. I don’t care about our pasts, or about anything else, right now. I just want you.”

She leaned into his hand, smiling softly. “I want you too… Ron.”

He grinned down at her. “So, is there anything else you want to say?”

Pansy considered it for a moment, then shook her head. “I think I’m good.”

“Thank Merlin,” he said, and he kissed her again. 

This time she sighed into it, wrapping her arms around him as his tongue worked its way into her mouth once more. As she let herself feel all the delicious sensations his surprisingly skilled mouth evoked in her, the smell of jasmine came back. 

Soon Ron’s mouth left hers with a soft suction noise, and he trailed it down her chin, throat and neck in a series of butterfly kisses, before finding a spot just below her right ear that made her shiver when he breathed onto it. 

“I see you’re sensitive there,” he murmured.

Pansy huffed out an amused chuckle, which quickly turned into a sigh when he planted his mouth against that spot and started gently sucking. The sensation went straight to her pussy, and before long she was letting out loud, undignified moans. Not that she cared about dignity at this point.

“Like that, huh?” Ron asked her, using that same low, gravelly voice. She could feel him smiling against her skin. 

Pansy pulled away to smirk at him. “Do you really need to ask?”

“No. But saying ‘yes’ would be great for my ego.”

“Fine. Yes.” Pansy rolled her eyes, and Ron grinned in amusement. “Now, please, shut up and kiss me again.”

“Oh, I will. But first…” He grabbed her hand and lead her out of the bathroom.

She thought he was going to take her to the bed, but he apparently desired a little detour first. He let go of her hand and left her standing there as he closed the bedroom door.

She arched an eyebrow. “Er, you realise there’s nobody else in this house, right?”

“Obviously,” he replied.

He then took her, pushed her against the door, and closed the space between them.

“I just want to pick up from where we left off on Thursday,” he said, before capturing her mouth with his again. As her hands threaded themselves into his hair, his snaked their way around her waist and slipped under her top. They were warm and gentle, but the feeling of the bare skin of his hands on her back was somehow hotter and more fiery than it had any real business being. 

Ron started to run those hands of his over her bare skin, and she suddenly needed both of them to be as naked as possible. She pulled her mouth away from his so that she could pull his shirt off, and he her pyjama top. Their respective bottoms soon followed, and she managed to get his underwear off at the same time. The sight of his fully exposed and semi-erect cock gave her excited goosebumps. She made to pull off her own pants, but his hand on hers stopped her.

“Not yet,” he said. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Besides, your knickers are nice.”

She looked down. Her pants were just red cotton briefs. She liked the colour, but they were hardly anything special. But with the way Ron was looking at them, one would think they were the sexiest undies ever.

_Perhaps_ , she considered, _it’s not the undies themselves that he likes, but how I look in them_.

That thought gave her more excited goosebumps. She could not wait to have sex with this man.

He took her hand and pulled her to the bed. She was so keen to feel his lips on hers again that she started kissing him before they’d made it to a properly horizontal position. He did not seem to mind though. Indeed, soon after they started kissing, he managed to arrange them so she was lying on her back and he was on his side next to her. He smoothed his hand down her chest, pausing briefly to cup and stroke each breast just long enough for her nipples to harden. Further down his hand travelled, past her navel, to the top of her knickers. She could not help but lift her pelvis a fraction as his teasing fingers ran along the thin elastic. He smiled against her lips, slipped his hand inside, and found her clit with so little trouble that she had to wonder whether somebody had taught him how to be an amazing lover, or if he had just known how to do it naturally.

She was more than wet enough. His hand travelled further south briefly to catch some of the natural lubricant, before returning to stroke and tease the sensitive nub. She broke the kiss at that point, as her need to vocalise her pleasure was too great.

“Oh, Merlin,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering closed.

“Yes?” Ron quipped. 

Everything Pansy was experiencing felt far too good for her to ruin it with her usual scorn, so she settled for lightly slapping him on the shoulder. Her eyes opened to find him leaning on one propped elbow, watching her changing facial expressions while his hand worked its magic.

“How’re you so good at this?” she managed to breathe out.

“Practice,” he replied. “Although, I was worried I might be a bit rusty.”

“Definitely not. You’re… oh!” She grabbed at his hand, and he stopped immediately. 

“Too much?” he asked.

“No. Not at all. I just. I’m close. And I want that-” she pointed at his cock, which was now fully erect, “-inside me. I want you” she said, looking back into his eyes “-to come inside me.”

Ron blinked. “That is probably the hottest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Pansy grinned at him. “Well?” she said.

Ron grinned back, and tugged her underwear off. Pansy bent her knees and spread her legs wide, her excitement and anticipation mounting.

Ron positioned himself on top of her, the hand that he had just been using to build her up now giving his cock a few quick tugs. He positioned it at her entrance, and leaned down to kiss her as he pushed in.

If what she had been feeling before had been good (and it was), this was Heaven. Pansy felt so wonderfully, deliciously full, and considering the look of bliss on Ron’s face when he broke the kiss and met her eyes again, he felt the same way.

He paused for a moment, as though he needed to get used to the sensation. But then he began to move. He started slowly, pulling almost all of the way out of her before driving back in. As he moved down, she moved her hips up in an admittedly feeble attempt to meet him halfway. Each movement he made had her feeling a delightful little tug on her clitoris, while every upward thrust of hers had him grunting in what she had to assume was appreciation. 

Ron started picking up his pace before too long. Her moans, which started quietly, steadily got louder as her pleasure continued to build. Soon his movements became even faster and far less controlled. He grabbed her hands from their place on his shoulders and pulled them above her head, which stretched out her body and accentuated the sensation. She shrieked in delight and wrapped her legs around him, trying to use her inner muscles to squeeze around him and help him find his release. 

After two or more thrusts in that position, her pleasure reached its breaking point. As her orgasm washed over her, she let out a loud ‘oh!’ and pushed against Ron as best she could. And as the waves died down, he pushed against her twice more before his orgasm raced through him too.

Once he stopped thrusting frantically and his eyes came back into focus, she wrapped her arms around his upper back and pulled him close. 

They stayed like that, Ron a heavy but comfortable weight on top of her, for a while. She was half considering falling asleep like that when he shifted off her.

“Should we go and check the door?” he asked, propping himself on his side again.

He sounded so sincere that she was not sure if he was joking or not. Then she turned her head to look properly at him, and saw the corners of his mouth turning in a crooked smile. She sighed, rubbing her face with her hand. 

“I mean, you could,” she finally said, “but you might not be allowed back in here again.”

Ron smirked a smirk so spectacular that he could have been Sorted into Slytherin based on it alone. He reached out and tucked a strand of her slightly sweaty hair behind her ear. 

“Liar,” he said softly.

Pansy smiled, bringing her hand up to pat his cheek.

“You caught me,” she said back, equally softly.

~*~

Sunday (Christmas Day)

Ron woke up on Christmas Day feeling more content than he had in a long time. He felt so pleased with the world around him that he might have even been willing to write reports, if asked.

He was alone, but he could hear the shower running. He smiled, got out of bed, and padded downstairs.

The front door stood before him, large and, until last night, imposing. But Ron knew, even before he tried, that it was going to open. He twisted the handle, and sure enough, the door swung open as if it had been doing so all week long. For something so momentous, it almost seemed anticlimactic.

His stomach growled, so he went to the kitchen and prepared toast, a pot of coffee, and a bowl of cereal for Pansy. He sat down and started eating, and Pansy appeared in the doorway five minutes later.

He had not been sure what he would feel when he saw her. He was positive he would not feel regret, or be annoyed at himself over what they had done. But he did not know if he would feel nothing, now that his sexual curiosity about her had been seen to, or if the sight of her would make his heart go aflutter.

In truth, he felt neither of those things. She looked beautiful, dressed in a red jumper and blue jeans with her hair spell-dried and worn down, which made him feel a little flutter of affection. The small, almost embarrassed smile she gave when she laid her eyes on him sent through another little hit of warmth, but it was nothing like the great surges of FEELING he felt when he was with Hermione, or the intense adoration he felt towards his family and best friends.

But that was OK. Those stronger feelings he had for others came from years of spending time together and relying on each other. He and Pansy had only spent a week in each other’s company. Stronger feelings took time. Or, at least, they did for him.

“Hey, you,” he said. “Merry Christmas.”

He wasn’t sure if he should kiss her, or get up and hug her, or something else. How does one greet one’s enemy-turned-forced-housemate-turned-person-you-just-shagged? Fortunately, Pansy made no move to do anything of the sort. She instead wished him a Merry Christmas, sat down and grabbed her cereal and a milk jug. All of which suited him perfectly.

“So,” Pansy asked after a moment or two’s silence. “Did you check the front door?”

Ron nodded. “It’s unlocked. Just like you said it would be.”

“Fantastic!” She beamed at him. “You can go to your folks for Christmas after all.”

“That I can,” he agreed. “And what’ll you be doing today, now that you don’t need to be here?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered, reaching for the coffee pot. “I’ll probably just write up my report for this house, maybe read for a bit, and get an early night. I miss my normal bed.”

Ron couldn’t help but feel a bit sad, hearing that. “You’re not going to go and see anyone?” he asked.

Pansy shook her head. “Christmas is a family thing. I don’t have any family. So, it’s not really a holiday for me.”

“I… I see.” Ron looked down at his nearly-empty coffee mug, mulling over the situation. He wondered if he should… yes, it would be the right thing to do. His family wouldn’t mind, and she wouldn’t have to be by herself. It was the right thing to do.

Plus, he would quite enjoy having her there. Part of him had gotten used to having her around.

He was about to open his mouth to make the suggestion, when he felt her rest her hand on top of his. He looked up to see her smiling knowingly at him.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But honestly, you don’t have to invite me over. I like spending my Christmas Days by myself. Truly.”

Ron raised his eyebrows at her. “Do you?”

She gave him another smile, and it was the sort of patronising, you-wouldn’t-understand smile he would give somebody who was not a Quidditch fan if they were to ask him what the big deal about it is. “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

Ron still did not understand, but he figured it was pointless to argue about it. He raised his hands in acknowledgement. “Alright. You do you. But the offer remains if you change your mind.”

“I appreciate it,” she said, giving his hand a gentle pat before standing up. “Now, let’s pack up and get out of this place.”

~*~

_Department of Magical Heritages and Artefacts - On-Location Assignment Report_

_Date/s of Assignment: 19/12/2006-25/12/2006_  
_Place of Assignment: Harrison Estate, Cirencester, Gloucestershire_  
_Officer/s on Duty: Pansy Parkinson, Ronald Weasley (DMLE)_  
_Type of Assignment: Magical Property Inspection_

_Harrison Estate comprises of thirteen bedrooms (three with attached ensuites), five full-size bathrooms, three half-size bathrooms, one library with approximately 300,000 volumes within, one large kitchen, two living rooms, one ballroom, one parlour, plus substantial grounds._

_The building was built between 1443-1447 by Reginald and Josephine Harrison, and it has been almost consistently in the ownership of the Harrison family ever since. The last owner to have lived there was John Harrison, who passed away in 1980. Since then, multiple attempts have been made to sell the house, but none of these attempts lasted for longer than one month, due to the new owners not being able to live in harmony with the house’s intricacies, or ‘quirks’._

_This house’s behaviour depends on two primary personality traits. The first of these is matchmaking. This house has a tendency to try and bring two, or more, people together to pursue friendships or romantic relationships. It also likes to try and strengthen already established relationships._

_The second personality trait is practical joking. Previous owners, especially the most recent active owner, John Harrison, were fond of particular practical jokes. The house appears to have absorbed that fondness for joking and will occasionally change elements of itself in ways that it considers humorous. The house is sensitive to the reactions dwellers have to its jokes, reacting well when the joke is taken in good humour, and poorly when the subject gets angry or upset._

_Following is a list of all observed quirks exhibited by the property._  
_\- Temperature Control: the house can warm up or cool down one or more of its rooms._  
_\- Food and Beverage Augmentation: the house can warm up or cool down food and beverages, as well as accelerate the ripening process or change the quality of fresh produce. Other augmentations might be possible, but further observation would need to be carried out._  
_\- Furniture Manipulation: the house can make certain pieces of furniture, such as chairs or beds, hard and uncomfortable, when it is not pleased with the dweller. Its chairs will also poke dwellers upon their sitting, as though there were an exposed spring. Conversely, when the house is happy with the dweller’s presence on a chair or bed, they will warm up, become soft and comfortable, and, on some occasions, give the sitter a massage._  
_\- Beverage Summoning: the house can summon beverages during suitable social occasions (parties, playing games, etc.) All observations have shown that the beverages produced are alcoholic, but non-alcoholic beverages might also be possible._  
_\- Door Locking: the house will occasionally lock one or more of its doors, in ways that are resistant to magical and muggle methods of unlocking. This has been observed to happen during times of conflict, times of friendship, and times of romance between dwellers. It is possible to unlock the door by performing an act of conflict resolution, friendship, or romance, depending on which is appropriate for the situation. The house has demonstrated a particular liking for kissing between two or more individuals._  
_\- Clothing Transfiguration: The house will turn clothing items into different, more flamboyant items. So far this phenomenon has been observed solely on the hat stand in the front entrance. However, it may also happen in other areas._  
_\- Transportation: The house will transport clothing, luggage, and people from one room to another, depending on where it thinks those items should be. Observations suggest that transportation will occur in ways that bring two or more people in closer proximity to each other (moving one person to the other person’s bedroom, moving one person’s luggage into the other person’s wardrobe, etc.)_  
_\- Scent Production: The house will change the scent of the surrounding air, to something that suits the mood of the room. Jasmine was the only scent observed, but other scents might also be possible._  
_\- Sound Manipulation: The house will change the location and/or volume of sounds around the house. There have been multiple observed and reported incidents of sounds of the shower being quietened, causing dwellers to walk in on each other. Also reported are sounds of people snoring in separate rooms being amplified and heard as though the snorer were right next to the listener._  
_\- Gifting: The house will bestow dwellers with gifts on occasion. During this mission, Mr Weasley was gifted with a red, sequined jacket, after the house Transfigured his coat into a similar jacket and Transfigured it back again._

_This house is recommended for dwellers who have close relationships or are open to making new friendships. It is an ideal place for practical jokers and people who do not mind being the targets of pranks. This house is not recommended for people who prefer private, personal space._

_In conclusion, this house is not for the faint of heart. It is an active dwelling that will make its presence felt on a regular basis. However, if you learn about its quirks and play along with it, this house can be a fun and exciting place to live or stay._

~*~

Pansy spent Christmas Day doing exactly what she had outlined to Ron that morning. Once she finished writing her report, she poured herself a glass of wine, found her paperback, and settled onto the big chair in her living room. There was no fireplace, but she had discovered that the Muggle heating system already installed in the flat worked very nicely indeed. 

It was a perfectly pleasant way to spend a day, but as the hours ticked by, Pansy found herself getting antsy as the events of the past week kept playing in her mind. After she and Ron had left the house that morning, they had walked to the Apparition point in complete silence. When they said goodbye to each other, they did it shortly, almost sharply, and without any discussion over whether they might meet again. It was stupid of her not to have said anything about it, and she regretted it more as the day wore on.

When the clock on her wall chimed at 6pm, she knew she could not sit there and do nothing for a second longer. She thought she could go to Diagon Alley first, and see if Ron and/or his brother had returned from the family gathering. If not, she might see if she could take a Floo from the Leaky Cauldron to his childhood home. It would be a touch awkward walking straight into somebody’s living room without permission, but she figured she could make her apologies when she got there. It was not important right then. What was important was that she found Ron and spoke to him. Immediately.

She threw on a coat, assembled her scarf and gloves, and strode purposefully to her front door.

When she opened it, who should be standing there but Ron Weasley himself, his fist raised as though he were about to knock on her door.

Pansy blinked. That was definitely not what she had been expecting. “I… I was just about to go and find you,” she blurted out. 

“Really?” He gave her an amused smile. “Did you spend most of the day thinking about the week, too?”

“Er, well… I spent some of the day writing my report…” she said feebly. 

Ron rolled his eyes, clearly still amused.

“So, listen,” he said. “I should have said all of this this morning, but I didn’t, and I’m here now, so…” he took a deep breath. “I don’t really know what this-” he gestured between them “-is. There is a good chance that it isn’t anything; just the result of what happens when two people who did not like each other are forced to spend a week in a matchmaking house. And if that’s the case, fine. But I would kind of like--” he cleared his throat “--no, I would really like, to see if, maybe, this is something.”

Pansy frowned at him. “‘Something’?” she repeated. “Something like what? Like… love?”

“Love?” Ron looked horrified, to Pansy’s relief. “Fuck no. It’s way too soon. I know this isn’t love. At least, not yet. But… I need to tell you something.”

“What’s that?” Pansy asked, keeping her face as calm as possible. Inside, however, she was jumping up and down like a flea who had drunk too much red squash.

“It’s…” Ron ran a hand nervously along the back of his neck. “It’s… I just… oh, fuck it. I’m a Gryffindor. I can do this.” He reached out, grabbing Pansy by the shoulders. “Pansy, I like you. I really like you. I really really really, really really really like you.”

Pansy could not help herself from smiling. Dramatic? Maybe. But it was also kind of perfect. “You do?” she asked.

Ron nodded.

She reached between them, placing her hands on either side of his face. “I really really, really really really, like you too, Ron Weasley.”

His smile turned into a grin, and Pansy pulled him towards her.

“Wait,” he said. “Does that mean I win?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You only said ‘really’ five times. I said it six.”

Pansy rolled her eyes. “You’re a complete git,” she said, before silencing him with a kiss.


End file.
